NASA Instrument Will Identify Clues to Martian Past

NASA Instrument Will Identify Clues to Martian Past

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-213&cid=release_2010-213

NASA's Curiosity rover, coming together for a late 2011 launch to Mars, has a newly
installed component: a key onboard X-ray instrument for helping the mission achieve its
goals.

Researchers will use Curiosity in an intriguing area of Mars to search for modern or
ancient habitable environments, including any that may have also been favorable for
preserving clues about life and environment.

The team assembling and testing Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., fastened the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument inside the
rover body on June 15. CheMin will identify the minerals in samples of powdered rock or
soil that the rover's robotic arm will deliver to an input funnel.

"Minerals give us a record of what the environment was like at the time they were
formed," said the principal investigator for CheMin, David Blake of NASA's Ames
Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Temperature, pressure, and the chemical
ingredients present -- including water -- determine what minerals form and how they are
altered.

The instrument uses X-ray diffraction, a first for a mission to Mars and a more definitive
method for identifying minerals than any instrument on previous missions. It supplements
the diffraction measurements with X-ray fluorescence capability to garner further details
of composition.

X-ray diffraction works by directing an X-ray beam at a sample and recording how the
X-rays are scattered by the sample's atoms. All minerals are crystalline, and in crystalline
materials, atoms are arranged in an orderly, periodic structure, causing the X-rays to be
scattered at predictable angles. From those angles, researchers can deduce the spacing
between planes of atoms in the crystal.

"You get a series of spacings and intensities for each mineral," Blake said. "It's more than
a fingerprint because it not only provides definitive identification, but we know the
reason for each pattern, right down to the atomic level."

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will send Curiosity to a place on Mars where
water-related minerals have been detected by Mars orbiters. The rover's 10 science
instruments (http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/) will examine the site's
modern environment and geological clues to its past environments. NASA's multi-step
strategy might include potential future missions for bringing Mars samples to Earth for
detailed analysis. One key goal for the Mars Science Laboratory mission is to identify a
good hunting ground for rocks that could hold biosignatures -- evidence of life -- though
this mission itself will not seek evidence of life.

On Earth, life has thrived for more than 3 billion years, but preserving evidence of life
from the geologically distant past requires specific, unusual conditions.

Fossil insects encased in amber or mastodon skeletons immersed in tar pits are examples
of how specific environments can store a record of ancient life by isolating it from normal
decomposition. But Mars won't have insects or mastodons; if Mars has had any life forms
at all, they were likely microbes. Understanding what types of environments may have
preserved evidence of microbial life from billions of years ago, even on Earth, is still an
emerging field of study. Some factors good for life are bad for preserving biosignatures.
For example, life needs water, but organic compounds, the carbon-chemical ingredients of
life, generally oxidize to carbon dioxide gas if not protected from water.

Some minerals detectable by CheMin, such as phosphates, carbonates, sulfates and silica,
can help preserve biosignatures. Clay minerals trap and preserve organic compounds
under some conditions. Some minerals that form when salty water evaporates can encase
and protect organics, too. Other minerals that CheMin could detect might also have
implications about past conditions favorable to life and to preservation of biosignatures.

"We'll finally have the ability to conduct a wide-ranging inventory of the minerals for one
part of Mars," said John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
chief scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory. "This will be a big step forward.
Whatever we learn about conditions for life, we'll also get a great benefit in learning
about the early evolution of a planet."

Curiosity's 10 science instruments, with about 15 times more mass than the five-
instrument science payload on either of the Mars rovers Spirit or Opportunity, provide
complementary capabilities for meeting the mission's goals. Some will provide quicker
evaluations of rocks when the rover drives to a new location, helping the science team
choose which rocks to examine more thoroughly with CheMin and the Sample Analysis at
Mars (SAM) experiment. SAM can identify organic compounds. Imaging information
about the context and textures of rocks will augment information about the rocks'
composition.

"CheMin will tell us the major minerals there without a lot of debate," said Jack Farmer of
Arizona State University, Tempe, a member of the instrument's science team. "It won't
necessarily reveal anything definitive about biosignatures, but it will help us select the
rocks to check for organics. X-ray diffraction is the gold standard for mineralogy.
Anyone who wants to determine the minerals in a rock on Earth takes it to an X-ray
diffraction lab."

Blake began working 21 years ago on a compact X-ray diffraction instrument for use in
planetary missions. His work with colleagues has resulted in commercial portable
instruments for use in geological field work on Earth, as well as the CheMin instrument.
The spinoff instruments have found innovative applications in screening for counterfeit
pharmaceuticals in developing nations and analyzing archaeological finds.

CheMin is roughly a cube 25 centimeters (10 inches) on each side, weighing about 10
kilograms (22 pounds). It generates X-rays by aiming high-energy electrons at a target of
cobalt, then directing the X-rays into a narrow beam. The detector is a charge-coupled
device like the ones in electronic cameras, but sensitive to X-ray wavelengths and cooled
to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit).

A sample wheel mounted between the X-ray source and detector holds 32 disc-shaped
sample cells, each about the diameter of a shirt button and thickness of a business card,
with transparent plastic walls. Rotating the wheel can position any cell into the X-ray
beam. Five cells hold reference samples from Earth to help calibrate the instrument. The
other 27 are reusable holders for Martian samples. Samples of gritty powder delivered by
the robotic arm to CheMin's inlet funnel will each contain about as much material as in a
baby aspirin.

Each CheMin analysis of a sample requires up to 10 hours of accumulating data while X-
rays are hitting the sample. The time may be split into two or more nights of operation.

Besides X-ray diffraction, CheMin records X-ray fluorescence data from the analyzed
material. X-ray fluorescence works by recording the secondary X-rays generated when
the atoms in the sample are excited by the primary X-ray source. Different elements,
when excited, emit fluorescent X-rays at different and characteristic energies, so this
information indicates which elements are present. This compositional information will
supplement similar data collected by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on Curiosity's
arm.

CheMin's team of scientists combines expertise in mineralogy, petrology, materials
science, astrobiology and soil science, with experience studying terrestrial, lunar and
Martian rocks.

The launch period for the Mars Science Laboratory will begin on Nov. 25, 2011, for a
landing on Mars in August 2012. Blake's wish for results from the Martian rock data he's
already been anticipating for more than two decades: "I hope we find something
unexpected, something surprising."

#2010-213
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NASA Satellite Adds Carbon Dioxide to Its Repertoire

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-212 June 28, 2010

NASA SATELLITE ADDS CARBON DIOXIDE TO ITS REPERTOIRE

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-212&cid=release_2010-212

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-led research team has expanded the growing global armada of
remote sensing satellites capable of studying carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas driving
changes in Earth's climate.

The newest addition is the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument on NASA's Aura
spacecraft, launched in 2004. TES measures the state and composition of Earth's troposphere, the
lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, located between Earth's surface and about 16 kilometers (10
miles) in altitude. While TES was not originally designed to measure carbon dioxide, a team led by
Susan Kulawik of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has successfully developed
and validated a TES carbon dioxide tool.

Kulawik's team analyzed three years of carbon dioxide data from TES and compared them to other
carbon dioxide data sources. These sources included the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS)
instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft, aircraft and ground station samples, and two National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration carbon dioxide research tools: GLOBALVIEW-CO2 and
CarbonTracker. The TES data were found to be in good agreement with the other data. The TES
study appears in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Kulawik says TES data may be able to help significantly reduce uncertainties in annual regional
estimates of where carbon dioxide is being created (sources) and where it is being stored (sinks).

"It's easy to see why you need measurements near Earth's surface, but TES measurements in the
region of the atmosphere where carbon dioxide gets transported around the globe are also key to
understanding carbon dioxide sources and sinks," Kulawik said.

Study co-authors Ray Nassar and Dylan Jones of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, found
that TES data can reduce -- by approximately 70 percent -- uncertainties in estimates of how much
carbon dioxide is being released and stored in South America's tropical rain forests and Africa's
grasslands. These include the Amazon, Congo and surrounding savannahs.

"These regions have a major influence on the global carbon cycle," said Jones. "The new carbon
dioxide data from TES will help scientists reduce uncertainties in our understanding of carbon
dioxide, particularly in tropical regions, where there are currently very few surface or aircraft
measurements."

Carbon dioxide is the most important human-produced greenhouse gas. Its current global average
concentration in Earth's atmosphere is about 389 parts per million by volume, increasing by about two
parts per million each year. This concentration varies seasonally and by hemisphere. Estimates are
challenging, as it varies by less than two percent globally in the mid-troposphere.

Currently, about 55 percent of human-produced carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere; the rest is
stored in the ocean and by land plants, but exactly where remains a mystery. Recent studies have
shown carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion have been increasing faster than
predicted, while the southern hemispheric oceans' capacity for storing carbon dioxide may be
diminishing. Scientists want to better understand carbon dioxide sources and sinks so they can more
reliably predict future atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, assess the impact of land use changes on
atmospheric carbon dioxide, develop mitigation strategies and verify international treaties.

The new TES carbon dioxide data complement the available international space-based resources for
measuring carbon dioxide. These include AIRS; Envisat's European Scanning Imaging Absorption
Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY); the European MetOp Infrared
Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI); and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's
Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT). The Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission, NASA's
first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide and its sources and sinks, was lost in a launch
vehicle mishap in February 2009. It is currently being rebuilt for a planned launch in 2013.

TES will measure carbon dioxide in the troposphere at altitudes between 2 and 8 kilometers (1.2 to 5
miles), with peak sensitivity at around 5 kilometers (3.1 miles). It will produce carbon dioxide
products at latitudes between 40 degrees south and 45 degrees north. The team expects to release
daily and monthly TES carbon dioxide data products to the public starting this July.

Other institutions participating in the study include the National Institute for Environmental Studies,
Tsukuba-City, Ibaraki, Japan; the Meteorological Research Institute, Tsukuba-City, Ibaraki, Japan;
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.; and NOAA's Earth System Research
Laboratory, Boulder, Colo.

For more on the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer, visit: http://tes.jpl.nasa.gov .

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

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Swing by Asteroid Lutetia With the European Space Agency and JPL

Swing by Asteroid Lutetia With the European Space Agency and JPL

This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

06.25.10 -- The Rosetta Orbiter, a European Space Agency spacecraft heading for a
2014 encounter with a comet, will be flying close to asteroid Lutetia on Saturday, July 10.
Classes and clubs are invited to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 2 to 4 p.m. that day
to see first-ever, close-up images of Lutetia, talk to a NASA/JPL Rosetta project manager and participate in educational activities.

Lutetia is a large metal-rich asteroid and part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Rosetta will make its
closest approach to Lutetia at 9:10 a.m. (Pacific Time), flying within 3,200 kilometers (just under 2,000 miles) of the
asteroid's surface. This encounter will be Rosetta's first observations of a metal asteroid. The suite of NASA instruments
aboard Rosetta will record the first-ever ultraviolet view of such an asteroid, make measurements that will help scientists
understand the properties of the asteroid's surface crust, record the solar wind in the vicinity and look for evidence of an atmosphere.

Beginning at 2 p.m. at JPL, NASA's project manager for U.S. instruments on Rosetta, Art Chmielewski, will review first
images with students and discuss the asteroid encounter. There will also be educational activities about comets and asteroids.
The JPL events will be geared to students in grades 3 - 8.

To sign up for this event, contact Andrea Angrum at 818-354-6775.

The European Space Agency will be webcasting events starting at 8 a.m. More information about the webcast and
the Rosetta Mission's 2014 encounter with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko can be found at http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/ .


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Earth to Lend Helping Hand to Comet Craft

Feature June 25, 2010

Earth to Lend Helping Hand to Comet Craft

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-211&cid=release_2010-211

NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft will fly past Earth this Sunday (June 27). Mission navigators have tailored this trajectory so the spacecraft can "hitch a ride" on Earth's gravity field, which will help propel the mission toward its appointment with comet Hartley 2 this fall. At time of closest approach to Earth, the spacecraft will be about 30,400 kilometers (18,900 miles) above the South Atlantic.

"Earth is a great place to pick up orbital velocity," said Tim Larson, the EPOXI project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This flyby will give our spacecraft a 1.5-kilometer-per-second [3,470 mph] boost, setting us up to get up close and personal with comet Hartley 2."

EPOXI is an extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft. Its name is derived from its two tasked
science investigations -- the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh). On Nov. 4, 2010, the mission will conduct an extended flyby of Hartley 2 using all three of the spacecraft's instruments (two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer).

The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution. JPL manages EPOXI for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For information about EPOXI, visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi or http://epoxi.umd.edu/ .

2010-211

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Priscilla Amador / Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-1357 / 354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
priscilla.r.amador@jpl.nasa.gov / jia-rui.c.cook@jpl.nasa.gov

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The Coolest Stars Come Out of the Dark

The Coolest Stars Come Out of the Dark

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-210&cid=release_2010-210

Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 14 of the coldest stars known in our
universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be
impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes. Spitzer's infrared vision was able to
pick out their feeble glow, much as a firefighter uses infrared goggles to find hot spots
buried underneath a dark forest floor.

The brown dwarfs join only a handful of similar objects previously discovered. The new
objects are between the temperatures of about 450 Kelvin to 600 Kelvin (350 to 620
degrees Fahrenheit). As far as stars go, this is bitter cold -- as cold, in some cases, as
planets around other stars.

These cool orbs have remained elusive for years, but will soon start coming out of the
dark in droves. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which is
up scanning the entire sky now in infrared wavelengths, is expected to find hundreds of
objects of a similarly chilly disposition, if not even colder. WISE is searching a volume of
space 40 times larger than that sampled in the recent Spitzer study, which concentrated
on a region in the constellation Boötes. The Spitzer mission is designed to look at targeted
patches of sky in detail, while WISE is combing the whole sky.

"WISE is looking everywhere, so the coolest brown dwarfs are going to pop up all around
us," said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and lead author of a recent paper in the Astronomical
Journal on the Spitzer discoveries. "We might even find a cool brown dwarf that is closer
to us than Proxima Centauri, the closest known star."

Brown dwarfs form like stars out of collapsing balls of gas and dust, but they are puny in
comparison, never collecting enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion and shine with
starlight. The smallest known brown dwarfs are about 5 to 10 times the mass of our planet
Jupiter -- that's as massive as some known gas-giant planets around other stars. Brown
dwarfs start out with a bit of internal heat left over from their formation, but with age,
they cool down. The first confirmed brown dwarf was announced in 1995.

"Brown dwarfs are like planets in some ways, but they are in isolation," said astronomer
Daniel Stern, co-author of the Spitzer paper at JPL. "This makes them exciting for
astronomers -- they are the perfect laboratories to study bodies with planetary masses."

Most of the new brown dwarfs found by Spitzer are thought to belong to the coolest
known class of brown dwarfs, called T dwarfs, which are defined as being less than
about 1,500 Kelvin (2,240 degrees Fahrenheit). One of the objects appears to be so cold
that it may even be a long-sought Y dwarf -- a proposed class of even colder stars. The T
and Y classes are part of a larger system categorizing all stars; for example, the hottest,
most massive stars are O stars; our sun is a G star.

"Models indicate there may be an entirely new class of stars out there, the Y dwarfs, that
we haven't found yet," said co-author Davy Kirkpatrick, a co-author of the study and a
member of the WISE science team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
Calif. "If these elusive objects do exist, WISE will find them." Kirkpatrick is a world
expert in brown dwarfs -- he came up with L, T and Y classifications for the cooler stars.

Kirkpatrick says that it's possible that WISE could find an icy, Neptune-sized or bigger
object in the far reaches of our solar system -- thousands of times farther from the sun
than Earth. There is some speculation amongst scientists that such a cool body, if it exists,
could be a brown dwarf companion to our sun. This hypothetical object has been
nicknamed "Nemesis."

"We are now calling the hypothetical brown dwarf Tyche instead, after the benevolent
counterpart to Nemesis," said Kirkpatrick. "Although there is only limited evidence to
suggest a large body in a wide, stable orbit around the sun, WISE should be able to find
it, or rule it out altogether."

The 14 objects found by Spitzer are hundreds of light-years away -- too far away and
faint for ground-based telescopes to see and confirm with a method called spectroscopy.
But their presence implies that there are a hundred or more within only 25 light-years of
our sun. Because WISE is looking everywhere, it will find these missing orbs, which will
be close enough to confirm with spectroscopy. It's possible that WISE will even find
more brown dwarfs within 25-light years of the sun than the number of stars known to
exist in this space.

"WISE is going to transform our view of the solar neighborhood," said Eisenhardt. We'll
be studying these new neighbors in minute detail -- they may contain the nearest
planetary system to our own."

Other authors of the Spitzer paper are Roger Griffith and Amy Mainzer of JPL; Ned
Wright, A.M. Ghez and Quinn Konopacky of UCLA; Matthew Ashby and Mark
Brodwin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge; Mass.,
Michael Brown of Monash University, Australia; R.S. Bussmann of the University of
Arizona, Tucson; Arjun Dey of National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, Ariz.;
Eilat Glikman of Caltech; Anthony Gonzalez and David Vollbach of the University of
Florida, Gainesville; and Shelley Wright of the University of California, Berkeley.

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.

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

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer . More information about WISE is online at http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/wise.

#2010-210

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

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New Clues Suggest Wet Era on Early Mars Was Global

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

Kristi Marren
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
240-228-6268
Kristi.marren@jhu.edu

News release: 2010-209 June 24, 2010

New Clues Suggest Wet Era on Early Mars Was Global

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-209&cid=release_2010-209

PASADENA, Calif. -- Minerals in northern Mars craters seen by two orbiters suggest that a phase in
Mars' early history with conditions favorable to life occurred globally, not just in the south.

Southern and northern Mars differ in many ways, so the extent to which they shared ancient
environments has been open to question.

In recent years, the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter have found clay minerals that are signatures of a wet environment at
thousands of sites in the southern highlands of Mars, where rocks on or near the surface are about
four billion years old. Until this week, no sites with those minerals had been reported in the northern
lowlands, where younger volcanic activity has buried the older surface more deeply.

French and American researchers report in the journal Science this week that some large craters
penetrating younger, overlying rocks in the northern lowlands expose similar mineral clues to ancient
wet conditions.

"We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water about four billion years
ago," said John Carter of the University of Paris, the report's lead author.

Other types of evidence about liquid water in later epochs on Mars tend to point to shorter durations
of wet conditions or water that was more acidic or salty.

The researchers used the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), an
instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to check 91 craters in the northern lowlands. In at
least nine, they found clays and clay-like minerals called phyllosilicates, or other hydrated silicates
that form in wet environments on the surface or underground.

Earlier observations with the OMEGA spectrometer on Mars Express had tentatively detected
phyllosilicates in a few craters of the northern plains, but the deposits are small, and CRISM can
make focused observations on smaller areas than OMEGA.

"We needed the better spatial resolution to confirm the identifications," Carter said. "The two
instruments have different strengths, so there is a great advantage to using both."

CRISM Principal Investigator Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Md., a co-author of the new report, said that the findings aid interpretation of
when the wet environments on ancient Mars existed relative to some other important steps in the
planet's early history.

The prevailing theory for how the northern part of the planet came to have a much lower elevation
than the southern highlands is that a giant object slammed obliquely into northern Mars, turning
nearly half of the planet's surface into the solar system's largest impact crater. The new findings
suggest that the formation of water-related minerals, and thus at least part of the wet period that may
have been most favorable to life, occurred between that early giant impact and the later time when
younger sediments formed an overlying mantle.

"That large impact would have eliminated any evidence for the surface environment in the north that
preceded the impact," Murchie said. "It must have happened well before the end of the wet period."

The report's other two authors are Francois Poulet and OMEGA Principal Investigator Jean-Pierre
Bibring, both of the University of Paris.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory provided and operates CRISM, one of six instruments on that orbiter.

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

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NASA Radar Images Show How Mexico Quake Deformed Earth

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

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

News Release: 2010-208 June 23, 2010

NASA Radar Images Show How Mexico Quake Deformed Earth

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-208&cid=release_2010-208

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has released the first-ever airborne radar images of the deformation in Earth's surface caused by a major earthquake -- the magnitude 7.2 temblor that rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest on April 4.

The data reveal that in the area studied, the quake moved the Calexico, Calif., region in a downward and southerly direction up to 80 centimeters (31 inches). The maps can be seen at: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/UAVSARimage20100623.html .

A science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., used the JPL-developed Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) to measure surface deformation from the quake. The radar flies at an altitude of 12.5 kilometers (41,000 feet) on a Gulfstream-III aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.

The team used a technique that detects minute changes in the distance between the aircraft and the ground over repeated, GPS-guided flights. The team combined data from flights on Oct. 21, 2009, and April 13, 2010. The resulting maps are called interferograms.

The April 4, 2010, El Mayor-Cucapah quake was centered 52 kilometers (32 miles) south-southeast of Calexico, Calif., in northern Baja California. It occurred along a geologically complex segment of the boundary between the North American and Pacific tectonic plates. The quake, the region's largest in nearly 120 years, was also felt in southern California and parts of Nevada and Arizona. It killed two, injured hundreds and caused substantial damage. There have been thousands of aftershocks, extending from near the northern tip of the Gulf of California to a few miles northwest of the U.S. border. The area northwest of the main rupture, along the trend of California's Elsinore fault, has been especially active, and was the site of a large, magnitude 5.7 aftershock on June 14.

UAVSAR has mapped California's San Andreas and other faults along the plate boundary from north of San Francisco to the Mexican border every six months since spring 2009, looking for ground motion and increased strain along faults. "The goal of the ongoing study is to understand the relative hazard of the San Andreas and faults to its west like the Elsinore and San Jacinto faults, and capture ground displacements from larger quakes," said JPL geophysicist Andrea Donnellan, principal investigator of the UAVSAR project to map and assess seismic hazard in Southern California.

Each UAVSAR flight serves as a baseline for subsequent quake activity. The team estimates displacement for each region, with the goal of determining how strain is partitioned between faults. When quakes do occur during the project, the team will observe their associated ground motions and assess how they may redistribute strain to other nearby faults, potentially priming them to break. Data from the Baja quake are being integrated into JPL's QuakeSim advanced computer models to better understand the fault systems that ruptured and potential impacts to nearby faults, such as the San Andreas, Elsinore and San Jacinto faults.

One figure (Figure 1, http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/464787main_quake20100623-figure1-full.jpg) shows a UAVSAR interferogram swath measuring 110 by 20 kilometers (69 by 12.5 miles) overlaid atop a Google Earth image. Each colored contour, or fringe, of the interferogram represents 11.9 centimeters (4.7 inches) of surface displacement. Major fault lines are marked in red, and recent aftershocks are denoted by yellow, orange and red dots.

The quake's maximum ground displacements of up to 3 meters (10 feet) actually occurred well south of where the UAVSAR measurements stop at the Mexican border. However, these displacements were measured by JPL geophysicist Eric Fielding using synthetic aperture radar interferometry from European and Japanese satellites and other satellite imagery, and by mapping teams on the ground.

Scientists are still working to determine the exact northwest extent of the main fault rupture, but it is clear it came within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of the UAVSAR swath, close to the point where the interferogram fringes converge. "Continued measurements of the region should tell us whether the main fault rupture has moved north over time," Donnellan said.

An enlargement of the interferogram is shown in another figure (Figure 2, http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/464538main_uavsar_2-20100623-full.jpg), focusing on the area where the largest deformation was measured. The enlargement, which covers an area measuring about 20 by 20 kilometers (12.5 by 12.5 miles), reveals many small "cuts," or discontinuities, in the fringes. These are caused by ground motions ranging from a centimeter to tens of centimeters (a few inches) on small faults. "Geologists are finding the exquisite details of the many small fault ruptures extremely interesting and valuable for understanding the faults that ruptured in the April 4th quake," said Fielding. Another figure, Figure 3, (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/464540main_uavsar_3-20100623-full.jpg) shows a close-up of the region where the magnitude 5.7 aftershock struck.

"UAVSAR's unprecedented resolution is allowing scientists to see fine details of the Baja earthquake's fault system activated by the main quake and its aftershocks," said UAVSAR Principal Investigator Scott Hensley of JPL. "Such details aren't visible with other sensors."

UAVSAR is part of NASA's ongoing effort to apply space-based technologies, ground-based techniques and complex computer models to advance our understanding of quakes and quake processes. The radar flew over Hispaniola earlier this year to study geologic processes following January's devastating Haiti quake. The data are giving scientists a baseline set of imagery in the event of future quakes. These images can then be combined with post-quake imagery to measure ground deformation, determine how slip on faults is distributed, and learn more about fault zone properties.

UAVSAR is also serving as a flying test bed to evaluate the tools and technologies for future space-based radars, such as those planned for a NASA mission currently in formulation called the Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of Ice, or DESDynI. That mission will study hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides, as well as global environmental change.

For more information on UAVSAR, visit: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/ . JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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Earth-like Planets May Be Ready for Their Close-Up

Earth-like Planets May Be Ready for Their Close-Up June 23, 2010

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-207&cid=release_2010-207

Many scientists speculate that our galaxy could be full of places like Pandora from the movie "Avatar" -- Earth-like worlds in solar systems besides our own.

That doesn't mean such worlds have been easy to find, however. Of the 400-plus planets so far discovered, none could support life as we know it on Earth.

"The problem with finding Earth-like planets," said Stefan Martin, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., "is that their host stars can emit 10 million times more infrared light than the planet itself. And because planets like ours are small and orbit very close to their respective stars, it makes Earths almost impossible to see."

Together with A.J. Booth (formerly at JPL and now at Sigma Space Corp., Lanham, Md.), Martin may have developed a way to make this almost impossible feat a reality.

Their instrument design, called a "nulling interferometer," observes planets in infrared light, where they are easier to detect. It is designed to combine starlight captured by four different telescopes, arranging the light waves from the star in such a way that they cancel each other out. "We're able to make the star look dimmer -- basically turning it off," Martin said.

Nulling interferometry is not a new idea, but what sets the results from Martin and Booth apart is how effective it turned out to be. "Our null depth is 10 to 100 times better than previously achieved by other systems," Martin said. "This is the first time someone has cross-combined four telescopes, set up in pairs, and achieved such deep nulls. It's extreme starlight suppression."

That suppression could allow scientists to get a better look at exoplanets than ever before. "We're able to make the planet flash on and off so that we can detect it," Martin said. "And because this system makes the light from the star appear 100 million times fainter, we would be able to see the planet we're looking for quite clearly."

Pandora, up close and personal

Nulling interferometry isn't the only way scientists can find other Earths. NASA's Kepler mission, currently in orbit, is looking for Earth-like planets by watching the light of faraway stars dim slightly as their planets pass in front of them. Another method of observing exoplanets is coronagraphy, which uses a mask to block the optical light of a star, making its surrounding planets more easily visible. And the proposed SIM Lite mission would also be able to find nearby planets by observing the gravity-induced "wobbling" of their host stars.

However, Martin and Booth's nulling interferometer could eventually give astronomers the ability to get up close and personal with Earth-like worlds, analyzing their atmospheres for signs of habitability or even possibly life. "We expect to eventually be able to see hundreds of planets with this technique," Martin said.

The technology that they've developed could be used on a follow-up space mission to SIM Lite and Kepler. Martin is now planning to test the system in conditions that better mimic a real-life mission.

Once considered the stuff of science fiction, it may not be long before Earth-like planets, or, in the case of Pandora, Earth-like moons of giant planets, are found to exist other places besides the silver screen.

#2010-207
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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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Save the Date: Education Alley Comes to Southern California, Aug. 31 – Sept. 2

Save the Date: Education Alley Comes to Southern California, Aug. 31 -- Sept. 2

This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

06.22.10 -- What is outer space like? What do astronauts eat in space? What types of jobs are available for people who like space?
Scientists, engineers, astronauts and educators will answer these questions and more at Education Alley, part of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2010 Conference and Exhibit, August 31 through September 2, at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.

Students will meet astronauts, talk to engineers who work with satellites and GPS technology, learn how space impacts daily life on Earth
and be part of a mock NASA news conference. NASA, along with more than 15 industry and educational exhibitors, will feature space-related
activities and explain how math and science are the foundations for exciting careers in the space industry.

The free exhibit is open 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., daily. Space is limited.

For more information, registration and contact information, go to http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=834 .

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NASA Awards Launch Services Contract For OCO-2 Mission

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Michael Curie 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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George H. Diller 321-867-2468
NASA Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
George.h.diller@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-206 June 22, 2010

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract For OCO-2 Mission

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-206&cid=release_2010-206

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA has selected Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission. The spacecraft will fly in February 2013 aboard a Taurus XL 3110 rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The total cost of the OCO-2 launch services is approximately $70 million. The estimated cost includes the task ordered launch service for a Taurus XL 3110 rocket, plus additional services under other contracts for payload processing, OCO-2 mission-unique support, launch vehicle integration, and tracking, data and telemetry support.

OCO-2 is NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate. OCO-2 will provide the first complete picture of human and natural carbon dioxide sources and "sinks," the places where the gas 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 OCO-2 spacecraft will replace OCO-1, lost during a launch vehicle failure in 2009.

The OCO-2 project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch vehicle program management of the Taurus XL 3110 rocket.

For more information about NASA and agency missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov . For more on OCO-2, visit: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

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

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Astronomers Discover Star-Studded Galaxy Tail

Astronomers Discover Star-Studded Galaxy Tail

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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-202&cid=release_2010-202

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has discovered a galaxy tail studded with bright
knots of new stars. The tail, which was created as the galaxy IC 3418 plunged into the
neighboring Virgo cluster of galaxies, offers new insight into how stars form.

"The gas in this galaxy is being blown back into a turbulent wake," said Janice Hester of
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, lead author of a recent study
published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "The gas is like sand caught up by a stiff
wind. However, the particular type of gas that is needed to make stars is heavier, like
pebbles, and can't be blown out of the galaxy. The new Galaxy Evolution Explorer
observations are teaching us that this heavier, star-forming gas can form in the wake,
possibly in swirling eddies of gas."

Collisions between galaxies are a fairly common occurrence in the universe. Our Milky
Way galaxy will crash into the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. Galaxies tangle
together, kicking gas and dust all around. Often the battered galaxies are left with tails of
material stripped off during the violence.

Hester and her team studied the tail of IC 3418, which formed in a very different way.
IC 3418 is mingling not with one galaxy, but with the entire Virgo cluster of galaxies 54
million light-years away from Earth. This massive cluster, which contains about 1,500
galaxies and is permeated by hot gas, is pulling in IC 3418, causing it to plunge through
the cluster's gas at a rate of 1,000 kilometers per second, or more than 2 million miles per
hour. At this incredible speed, the little galaxy's gas is being shoved back into a choppy
tail.

The astronomers were able to find this tail with the help of the Galaxy Evolution
Explorer. Clusters of massive, young stars speckle the tail, and these stars glow with
ultraviolet light that the space telescope can see. The young stars tell scientists that a
crucial ingredient for star formation – dense clouds of gas called molecular hydrogen –
formed in the wake of this galaxy's plunge. This is the first time astronomers have found
solid evidence that clouds of molecular hydrogen can form under the violent conditions
present in a turbulent wake.

"IC 3418's tail of star-formation demonstrates that strong turbulence promotes cloud
formation," said Mark Seibert, a co-author of the paper and a member of the Galaxy
Evolution Explorer science team at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Pasadena.

Hester added that galaxy tails provide the perfect environment for isolating the factors
controlling star formation.

"These tails are unique, exotic locations where we can probe the precise mechanisms
behind star formation," said Hester. "Understanding star formation is pivotal to
understanding the lifecycles of galaxies and the dramatic transformations that some
galaxies undergo. We can also study how the process affects the development of planets
like our own."

Other authors of the paper are James D. Neill, Ted K. Wyder and Christopher Martin of
Caltech; Armando Gil de Paz of the Universidad de Computense de Madrid, Spain;
Barry F. Madore of the Carnegie Institute of Washington; David Schiminovich of
Columbia University, N.Y., N.Y; and Michael Rich of UCLA.

Caltech leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science
operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the
mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's
Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National
d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission.

Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer is online at
http://www.nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu .

#2010-202
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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA Demonstrates Tsunami Prediction System

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

News release: 2010-198 June 14, 2010

NASA Demonstrates Tsunami Prediction System

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-198&cid=release_2010-198

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-led research team has successfully demonstrated for the first time
elements of a prototype tsunami prediction system that quickly and accurately assesses large
earthquakes and estimates the size of resulting tsunamis.

After the magnitude 8.8 Chilean earthquake on Feb. 27, a team led by Y. Tony Song of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used real-time data from the agency's Global Differential
GPS (GDGPS) network to successfully predict the size of the resulting tsunami. The network,
managed by JPL, combines global and regional real-time data from hundreds of GPS sites and
estimates their positions every second. It can detect ground motions as small as a few centimeters.

"This successful test demonstrates that coastal GPS systems can effectively be used to predict the size
of tsunamis," said Song. "This could allow responsible agencies to issue better warnings that can save
lives and reduce false alarms that can unnecessarily disturb the lives of coastal residents."

Song's team concluded that the Chilean earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded by instruments,
would generate a moderate, or local, tsunami unlikely to cause significant destruction in the Pacific.
The tsunami's effect was relatively small outside of Chile.

Song's GPS-based prediction was later confirmed using sea surface height measurements from the
joint NASA/French Space Agency Jason-1 and Jason-2 altimetry satellites. This work was partially
carried out by researchers at Ohio State University, Columbus.

"The value of coordinated real-time observations from precision GPS, satellite altimetry and advanced
Earth models has been demonstrated," said John LaBrecque, manager of the Solid Earth and Natural
Hazards program in the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington.

Song's prediction method, published in 2007, estimates the energy an undersea earthquake transfers
to the ocean to generate a tsunami. It relies on data from coastal GPS stations near an epicenter, along
with information about the local continental slope. The continental slope is the descent of the ocean
floor from the edge of the continental shelf to the ocean bottom.

Conventional tsunami warning systems rely on estimates of an earthquake's location, depth and
magnitude to determine whether a large tsunami may be generated. However, history has shown
earthquake magnitude is not a reliable indicator of tsunami size. Previous tsunami models presume a
tsunami's power is determined by how much the seafloor is displaced vertically. Song's theory says
horizontal motions of a faulting continental slope also contribute to a tsunami's power by transferring
kinetic energy to the ocean.

The theory is further substantiated in a recently accepted research paper by Song and co-author Shin-
Chan Han of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. That study used data from the
NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites to
examine the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

When the Feb. 27, 2010, earthquake struck, its ground motion was captured by the NASA GDGPS
network's station in Santiago, Chile, about 235 kilometers (146 miles) from the earthquake's
epicenter. These data were made available to Song within minutes of the earthquake, enabling him to
derive the seafloor motions.

Based on these GPS data, Song calculated the tsunami's source energy, ranking it as moderate: a 4.8
on the system's 10-point scale (10 being most destructive). His conclusion was based on the fact that
the ground motion detected by GPS indicated the slip of the fault transferred fairly minimal kinetic
energy to the ocean.

"We were fortunate to have a station sufficiently close to the epicenter," said Yoaz Bar-Sever, JPL
manager of the GDGPS system. "Broad international collaboration is required to densify the GPS
tracking network so that it adequately covers all the fault zones that can give rise to large earthquakes
around the world."

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov .

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

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NASA Kicks Off New Summer of Innovation Initiative

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
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Veronica McGregor 818-354-9452
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
veronica.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov

Ann Marie Trotta 202-358-1601
NASA Headquarters, Washington
ann.marie.trotta@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-196 June 10, 2010

NASA KICKS OFF NEW SUMMER OF INNOVATION INITIATIVE

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-196&cid=release_2010-196

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA Administrator Charles Bolden kicked off the agency's new Summer
of Innovation initiative today while at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calf.

The Summer of Innovation program will engage thousands of middle school students in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) during the summer months when many students
experience what's known as the "summer slide," a loss of skills acquired during the school year. The
program is a cornerstone of the Educate to Innovate campaign announced by President Obama last
November.

About 250 middle school students from the Los Angeles area participated in the kickoff festivities,
which included an opportunity to interact with astronauts, NASA scientists and engineers, several
hands-on educational activities; and a visit to the facility where the next Mars rover is being built.
The students also were treated to musical entertainment provided by actor/rapper Daniel Curtis Lee.

"It is wonderful to feel the excitement generated by these students as they experienced first-hand
what fascinating and challenging opportunities exist for students who follow STEM career paths,"
said Administrator Bolden. "I hope that by getting these students involved in NASA's missions and
programs now, it may pave the way for a new generation of scientists and engineers, which is
critically important to our nation's future."

NASA's Summer of Innovation program is a broad, nationwide effort that will leverage
partnerships with academia, industry and government. This program and the agency's other
education programs support NASA's commitment to excellence in science, technology, engineering
and mathematics, which will play a key role in preparing, inspiring, encouraging and nurturing the
nation's future work force.

To learn more about this program and the opportunities available, visit http://www.nasa.gov/soi . For
information about NASA education programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education .

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NASA and DLR Sign Agreement to Continue Grace Mission Through 2015

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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NASA Headquarters, Washington
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

John Yembrick 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
John.yembrick-1@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-195 June 10, 2010
NASA AND DLR SIGN AGREEMENT TO CONTINUE GRACE MISSION THROUGH 2015

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-195&cid=release_2010-195

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and German Aerospace Center
(DLR) Executive Board Chairman Johann-Dietrich Wörner signed an agreement Thursday during a
bilateral meeting in Berlin to extend the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission
through the end of its on-orbit life, which is expected in 2015.

Launched in March 2002, Grace tracks changes in Earth's gravity field by noting minute changes in
gravitational pull from local changes in Earth's mass. It does this by measuring changes in the
distance between its two identical spacecraft to one-hundredth the width of a human hair. These
spacecraft, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are in the same orbit
approximately 220 kilometers (137 miles) apart.

"The extension of this successful cooperative mission demonstrates the strength of the NASA-DLR
partnership and our commitment to continue working together in this very important area of Earth
science," Garver said.

NASA and DLR signed the original agreement in 1998. The two agencies jointly developed the
Grace mission and have cooperated on its operational phase since its launch. For the twin satellite
mission, NASA provided the instruments and selected satellite components, plus data validation and
archiving. DLR provided the primary satellite components, launch services and operations.

Grace maps gravity-field variations from month to month, recording changes caused by the seasons,
weather patterns and short-term climate change.

"The extension of this successful mission will deliver more valuable data to help us understand how
Earth's mass and gravity varies over time," Wörner said. "This is an important component necessary
to study changes in global sea level, polar ice mass, deep ocean currents and depletion and recharge of
continental aquifers. We appreciate the strong cooperation with our partner NASA."

Grace's monthly maps are up to 100 times more accurate than existing maps, substantially improving
the accuracy of techniques used by oceanographers, hydrologists, glaciologists, geologists and climate
scientists.

Data from the Grace mission have been used to measure the amount of water lost in recent years from
the aquifers for California's primary agricultural region in the state's Central Valley. An international
study recently used Grace data to show that ice losses from Greenland's ice sheet now are rapidly
spreading up its northwest coast.

For more information about the Grace mission, visit: http://science.nasa.gov/missions/grace .

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

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NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming

Feature June 09, 2010

NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-194&cid=release_2010-194

The space and astronomy worlds have June 13 circled on the calendar.

That's when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return
capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang
back to Earth. The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid,
Itokawa, five years ago and has logged about 2 billion kilometers (1.25 billion miles) since
its launch in May 2003.

With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, targeted for June 13 at Australia's remote
Woomera Test Range in South Australia, JAXA will have concluded a remarkable
mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers are playing a
contributing role.

"Hayabusa will be the first space mission to have made physical contact with an asteroid
and returned to Earth," said Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The mission and its team have faced
and overcome several challenges over the past seven years. This round-trip journey is a
significant space achievement and one which NASA is proud to be part of."

Launched May 9, 2003, from the Kagoshima Space Center, Uchinoura, Japan, Hayabusa
was designed as a flying testbed. Its mission: to research several new engineering
technologies necessary for returning planetary samples to Earth for further study. With
Hayabusa, JAXA scientists and engineers hoped to obtain detailed information on
electrical propulsion and autonomous navigation, as well as an asteroid sampler and
sample reentry capsule.

The 510-kilogram (950-pound) Hayabusa spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid Itokawa
in September 2005. Over the next two-and-a-half months, the spacecraft made up-close
and personal scientific observations of the asteroid's shape, terrain, surface altitude
distribution, mineral composition, gravity, and the way it reflected the sun's rays. On
Nov. 25 of that year, Hayabusa briefly touched down on the surface of Itokawa. That
was only the second time in history a spacecraft descended to the surface of an asteroid
(NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous-Shoemaker spacecraft landed on asteroid
Eros on Feb. 12, 2001). Hayabusa marked the first attempt to sample asteroid surface
material.

The spacecraft departed Itokawa in January 2007. The road home for the technology
demonstrator has been a long one, with several anomalies encountered along the way. But
now the spacecraft is three days away from its home planet, and the Australian
government, working closely with JAXA, has cleared the mission for landing. A team of
Japanese and American navigators is guiding Hayabusa on the final leg of its journey.
Together, they calculate the final trajectory correction maneuvers Hayabusa's ion
propulsion system must perform for a successful homecoming.

"We have been collaborating with the JAXA navigators since the launch of the mission,"
said Shyam Bhaskaran, a member of JPL's Hayabusa navigation team. "We worked
closely with them during the descents to the asteroid, and now are working together to
guide the spacecraft back home."

To obtain the data they need, the navigation team frequently calls upon JAXA's tracking
stations in Japan, as well as those of NASA's Deep Space Network, which has antennas
at Goldstone, in California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra,
Australia. In addition, the stations provide mission planners with near-continuous
communications with the spacecraft to keep them informed on spacecraft health.

"Our task is to help advise JAXA on how to best get a spacecraft traveling at 12.2
kilometers per second (27,290 miles per hour) to intersect a very specific target point 200
kilometers (120 miles) above the Earth," said Bhaskaran. "Once that is done, and the heat
shield of the sample return capsule starts glowing from atmospheric friction, our job is
done."

While atmospheric entry may be the end of the line for the team that has plotted the
spacecraft's every move for the past 2 billion kilometers, NASA's involvement continues
for the craft's final 200 kilometers (120 miles), to the surface of the Australian Outback.
A joint Japanese-U.S. team operating on the ground and in the air will monitor this most
critical event to help retrieve the capsule and heat shield.

"This is the second highest velocity re-entry of a capsule in history," said Peter Jenniskens,
a SETI Institute scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "This
extreme entry speed will result in high heating rates and thermal loads to the capsule's
heat shield. Such manmade objects entering with interplanetary speed do not happen
every day, and we hope to get a ringside seat to this one."

Jenniskens is leading an international team as it monitor the final plunge of Hayabusa to
Earth using NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory, which is managed and piloted by a crew
from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The DC-8 flies above
most clouds, allowing an unfettered line of sight for its instrument suite measuring the
shock-heated gas and capsule surface radiation emitted by the re-entry fireball.

The data acquired by the high-flying team will help evaluate how thermal protection
systems behave during these super-speedy spacecraft re-entries. This, in turn, will help
engineers understand what a sample return capsule returning from Mars would undergo.
The Hayabusa sample return capsule re-entry observation will be similar to earlier
observations by the DC-8 team of NASA's Stardust capsule return, and the re-entry of
the European Space Agency's ATV-1 ("Jules Verne") automated transfer vehicle.

Soon after the sample return capsule touches down on the ground, Hayabusa team
members will retrieve it and transport it to JAXA's sample curatorial facility in
Sagamihara, Japan. There, Japanese astromaterials scientists, assisted by two scientists
from NASA and one from Australia, will perform a preliminary cataloging and analysis of
the capsule's contents.

"This preliminary analysis follows the basic protocols used for Apollo moon rocks,
Genesis and Stardust samples," said Mike Zolensky, a scientist at NASA's Astromaterials
Research and Exploration Science Directorate at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. "If
this capsule contains samples from the asteroid, we expect it will take a year to determine
the primary characteristics of the samples, and learn how to best handle them. Then the
samples will be distributed to scientists worldwide for more detailed analysis."

"The Japanese and NASA engineers and scientists involved in Hayabusa's return from
asteroid Itokawa are proud of their collaboration and their joint accomplishments," said
Thompson. "Certainly, any samples retrieved from Itokawa will provide exciting new
insights to understanding the early history of the solar system. This will be the icing on
the cake, as this mission has already taught us so much. "

For more information about the Hayabusa mission, visit: http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/enterp/missions/hayabusa/index.shtml .

#2010-194
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DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

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Detailed Martian Scenes in New Images from Mars Orbiter

Detailed Martian Scenes in New Images from Mars Orbiter

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-193&cid=release_2010-193

Six hundred recent observations of the Mars landscape from an orbiting telescopic camera
include scenes of sinuous gullies, geometrical ridges and steep cliffs.

Each of the 600 newly released observations from the High Resolution Imaging Science
Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter covers an area of
several square miles on Mars and reveals details as small as desks.

The HiRISE images taken from April 5 to May 6, 2010, are now available on NASA's Planetary
Data System (http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/) and the camera team's website
(http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu).

The camera is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached
Mars in 2006. For more information about the mission, see http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/.

2010-193

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

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NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Fires Past Record for Speed Change

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-192 June 7, 2010

NASA'S DAWN SPACECRAFT FIRES PAST RECORD FOR SPEED CHANGE

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-192&cid=release_2010-192

PASADENA, Calif. – Deep in the heart of the asteroid belt, on its way to the first of the belt's two
most massive inhabitants, NASA's ion-propelled Dawn spacecraft has eclipsed the record for velocity
change produced by a spacecraft's engines.

The previous standard-bearer for velocity change, NASA's Deep Space 1, also impelled by ion
propulsion, was the first interplanetary spacecraft to use this technology. The Deep Space 1 record fell
on Saturday, June 5, when the Dawn spacecraft's accumulated acceleration over the mission exceeded
4.3 kilometers per second (9,600 miles per hour).

"We are using this amazing ion-engine technology as a stepping-stone to orbit and explore two of the
asteroid belt's most mysterious objects, Vesta and Ceres," said Robert Mase, Dawn project manager
from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

A spacecraft's change in velocity refers to its ability to change its path through space by using its own
rocket engines. This measurement of change begins only after the spacecraft exits the last stage of the
launch vehicle that hurled it into space.

To get to where it is in both the record books and the asteroid belt, the Dawn spacecraft had to fire its
three engines – one at a time-- for a cumulative total of 620 days. In that time, it has used less than
165 kilograms (363 pounds) of xenon propellant. Over the course of its eight-plus-year mission,
Dawn's three ion engines are expected to accumulate 2,000 days of operation -- 5.5 years of thrusting
-- for a total change in velocity of more than 38,620 kilometers per hour (24,000 miles per hour).

"I am delighted that it will be Dawn that surpasses DS1's record," said Marc Rayman, chief engineer
for the Dawn mission and a previous project manager for Deep Space 1."It is a tribute to all those
involved in the design and operations of this remarkable spacecraft."

At first glance, Dawn's pedal-to-the-metal performance is a not-so-inspiring 0-to-97 kilometers per
hour (0-to-60 miles per hour) in four days. But due to its incredible efficiency, it expends only 37
ounces of xenon propellant during that time. Then take into consideration that after those four days
of full-throttle thrusting, it will do another four days, and then another four. By the end of 12 days,
the spacecraft will have increased its velocity by more than 290 kilometers per hour (180 miles per
hour), with more days and weeks and months of continuous thrusting to come. In one year's time,
Dawn's ion propulsion system can increase the spacecraft's speed by 8,850 kilometers per hour (5,500
miles per hour), while consuming the equivalent of only 16 gallons of fuel.

"This is a special moment for the spacecraft team," said Dawn's principal investigator, Chris Russell of
the University of California Los Angeles. "In only 407 days, our minds will be on another set of
records, the data records that Dawn will transmit when we enter Vesta orbit."

Dawn's 4.8-billion-kilometer (3-billion-mile) odyssey includes exploration of asteroid Vesta in 2011
and 2012, and the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. These two icons of the asteroid belt have been witness
to much of our solar system's history. By using the same set of instruments at two separate
destinations, scientists can more accurately formulate comparisons and contrasts. Dawn's science
instrument suite will measure shape, surface topography and tectonic history, elemental and mineral
composition, as well as seek out water-bearing minerals. In addition, the way the Dawn spacecraft
orbits both Vesta and Ceres will be used to measure the celestial bodies' masses and gravity fields.

While Dawn surpassed Deep Space 1's record for velocity change, Deep Space 1 will continue to
reign as holder for the longest duration of powered spaceflight for another few months. Dawn is
expected to take over that record on about August 10 of this year.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of
California, Los Angeles, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Other scientific partners
include Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research,
Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany; DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany; Italian
National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. Orbital Sciences
Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the Dawn spacecraft.

To learn more about Dawn and its mission to the asteroid belt, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

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What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan?

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

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

Cathy Weselby 650-604-2791
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
cathy.weselby@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-190 June 3, 2010
WHAT IS CONSUMING HYDROGEN AND ACETYLENE ON TITAN?

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-190&cid=release_2010-190

PASADENA, Calif. – Two new papers based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft
scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. While
non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these
chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to
life on Titan's surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the
signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized "methane-based
life."

One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus that shows
hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the
surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps
hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene.

This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy
source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary
for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene
data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of
hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the
consumption of hydrogen.

"We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on
Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said. "If these signs do
turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a
second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth."

To date, methane-based life forms are only hypothetical. Scientists have not yet detected
this form of life anywhere, though there are liquid-water-based microbes on Earth that
thrive on methane or produce it as a waste product. On Titan, where temperatures are
around 90 Kelvin (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), a methane-based organism would have
to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes, but not water itself.
Water is frozen solid on Titan's surface and much too cold to support life as we know it.

The list of liquid candidates is very short: liquid methane and related molecules like
ethane. While liquid water is widely regarded as necessary for life, there has been
extensive speculation published in the scientific literature that this is not a strict
requirement.

The new hydrogen findings are consistent with conditions that could produce an exotic,
methane-based life form, but do not definitively prove its existence, said Darrell Strobel,
a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.,
who authored the paper on hydrogen.

Strobel, who studies the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Titan, analyzed data from
Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer and ion and neutral mass spectrometer in his
new paper. The paper describes densities of hydrogen in different parts of the atmosphere
and the surface. Previous models had predicted that hydrogen molecules, a byproduct of
ultraviolet sunlight breaking apart acetylene and methane molecules in the upper
atmosphere, should be distributed fairly evenly throughout the atmospheric layers.

Strobel found a disparity in the hydrogen densities that lead to a flow down to the
surface at a rate of about 10,000 trillion trillion hydrogen molecules per second. This is
about the same rate at which the molecules escape out of the upper atmosphere.

"It's as if you have a hose and you're squirting hydrogen onto the ground, but it's
disappearing," Strobel said. "I didn't expect this result, because molecular hydrogen is
extremely chemically inert in the atmosphere, very light and buoyant. It should 'float' to
the top of the atmosphere and escape."

Strobel said it is not likely that hydrogen is being stored in a cave or underground space
on Titan. The Titan surface is also so cold that a chemical process that involved a catalyst
would be needed to convert hydrogen molecules and acetylene back to methane, even
though overall there would be a net release of energy. The energy barrier could be
overcome if there were an unknown mineral acting as the catalyst on Titan's surface.

The hydrocarbon mapping research, led by Roger Clark, a Cassini team scientist based at
the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, examines data from Cassini's visual and infrared
mapping spectrometer. Scientists had expected the sun's interactions with chemicals in
the atmosphere to produce acetylene that falls down to coat the Titan surface. But Cassini
detected no acetylene on the surface.

In addition Cassini's spectrometer detected an absence of water ice on the Titan surface,
but loads of benzene and another material, which appears to be an organic compound that
scientists have not yet been able to identify. The findings lead scientists to believe that
the organic compounds are shellacking over the water ice that makes up Titan's bedrock
with a film of hydrocarbons at least a few millimeters to centimeters thick, but possibly
much deeper in some places. The ice remains covered up even as liquid methane and
ethane flow all over Titan's surface and fill up lakes and seas much as liquid water does
on Earth.

"Titan's atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the
surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the
organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again," Clark said. "All that implies Titan is a
dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now."

The absence of detectable acetylene on the Titan surface can very well have a non-
biological explanation, said Mark Allen, principal investigator with the NASA
Astrobiology Institute Titan team. Allen is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. Allen said one possibility is that sunlight or cosmic rays are transforming
the acetylene in icy aerosols in the atmosphere into more complex molecules that would
fall to the ground with no acetylene signature.

"Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice
after all non-biological explanations are addressed," Allen said. "We have a lot of work to
do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical
process, without biology, can explain these results – for example, reactions involving
mineral catalysts."

"These new results are surprising and exciting," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project
scientist at JPL. "Cassini has many more flybys of Titan that might help us sort out just
what is happening at the surface."

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, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington,
D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

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

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