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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space

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

Written by Tony Phillips
Contact:
Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850/359-3241
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Feature: 2011-128 April 28, 2011

Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-128&cid=release_2011-128

More than 30 years after they left Earth, NASA's twin Voyager probes are now at the
edge of the solar system. Not only that, they're still working. And with each passing
day they are beaming back a message that, to scientists, is both unsettling and
thrilling.

The message is, "Expect the unexpected."

"It's uncanny," says Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
Voyager Project Scientist since 1972. "Voyager 1 and 2 have a knack for making
discoveries."

Today, April 28, 2011, NASA held a live briefing to reflect on what the Voyager
mission has accomplished--and to preview what lies ahead as the probes prepare to
enter the realm of interstellar space in our Milky Way galaxy.

The adventure began in the late 1970s when the probes took advantage of a rare
alignment of outer planets for an unprecedented Grand Tour. Voyager 1 visited
Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
(Voyager 2 is still the only probe to visit Uranus and Neptune.)

When pressed to name the top discoveries from those encounters, Stone pauses, not
for lack of material, but rather an embarrassment of riches. "It's so hard to choose,"
he says.

Stone's partial list includes the discovery of volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io; evidence
for an ocean beneath the icy surface of Europa; hints of methane rain on Saturn's
moon Titan; the crazily-tipped magnetic poles of Uranus and Neptune; icy geysers on
Neptune's moon Triton; planetary winds that blow faster and faster with increasing
distance from the sun.

"Each of these discoveries changed the way we thought of other worlds," says Stone.
In 1980, Voyager 1 used the gravity of Saturn to fling itself slingshot-style out of the
plane of the solar system. In 1989, Voyager 2 got a similar assist from Neptune. Both
probes set sail into the void.

Sailing into the void sounds like a quiet time, but the discoveries have continued.
Stone sets the stage by directing our attention to the kitchen sink. "Turn on the
faucet," he instructs. "Where the water hits the sink, that's the sun, and the thin
sheet of water flowing radially away from that point is the solar wind. Note how the
sun 'blows a bubble' around itself."

There really is such a bubble, researchers call it the "heliosphere," and it is
gargantuan. Made of solar plasma and magnetic fields, the heliosphere is about three
times wider than the orbit of Pluto. Every planet, asteroid, spacecraft, and life form
belonging to our solar system lies inside.

The Voyagers are trying to get out, but they're not there yet. To locate them, Stone
peers back into the sink: "As the water [or solar wind] expands, it gets thinner and
thinner, and it can't push as hard. Abruptly, a sluggish, turbulent ring forms. That
outer ring is the heliosheath--and that is where the Voyagers are now."

The heliosheath is a very strange place, filled with a magnetic froth no spacecraft has
ever encountered before, echoing with low-frequency radio bursts heard only in the
outer reaches of the solar system, so far from home that the sun is a mere pinprick
of light.

"In many ways, the heliosheath is not like our models predicted," says Stone.
In June 2010, Voyager 1 beamed back a startling number: zero. That's the outward
velocity of the solar wind where the probe is now. No one thinks the solar wind has
completely stopped; it may have just turned a corner. But which way? Voyager 1 is
trying to figure that out through a series of "weather vane" maneuvers, in which the
spacecraft turns itself in a different direction to track the local breeze. The old
spacecraft still has some moves left, it seems.

No one knows exactly how many more miles the Voyagers must travel before they
"pop free" into interstellar space. Most researchers believe, however, that the end is
near. "The heliosheath is 3 to 4 billion miles in thickness," estimates Stone. "That
means we'll be out within five years or so."

There is plenty of power for the rest of the journey. Both Voyagers are energized by
the radioactive decay of a Plutonium 238 heat source. This should keep critical
subsystems running through at least 2020.

After that, he says, "Voyager will become our silent ambassador to the stars."

Each probe is famously equipped with a Golden Record, literally, a gold-coated copper
phonograph record. It contains 118 photographs of Earth; 90 minutes of the world's
greatest music; an audio essay entitled Sounds of Earth (featuring everything from
burbling mud pots to barking dogs to a roaring Saturn 5 liftoff); greetings in 55
human languages and one whale language; the brain waves of a young woman in
love; and salutations from the secretary general of the United Nations. A team led by
Carl Sagan assembled the record as a message to possible extraterrestrial civilizations
that might encounter the spacecraft.

"A billion years from now, when everything on Earth we've ever made has crumbled
into dust, when the continents have changed beyond recognition and our species is
unimaginably altered or extinct, the Voyager record will speak for us," wrote Carl
Sagan and Ann Druyan in an introduction to a CD version of the record.

Some people note that the chance of aliens finding the Golden Record is fantastically
remote. The Voyager probes won't come within a few light years of another star for
some 40,000 years. What are the odds of making contact under such circumstances?
On the other hand, what are the odds of a race of primates evolving to sentience,
developing spaceflight, and sending the sound of barking dogs into the cosmos?
Expect the unexpected, indeed.

The Voyagers were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics
System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission
Directorate.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/voyager .

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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

NASA Technology Looks Inside Japan's Nuclear Reactor

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

Priscilla Vega 818-354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Priscilla.r.vega@jpl.nasa.gov

Feature: 2011-126 April 26, 2011

NASA Technology Looks Inside Japan's Nuclear Reactor

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-126&cid=release_2011-126

Design techniques honed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for Mars
rovers were used to create the rover currently examining the inside of Japan's nuclear reactors,
in areas not yet deemed safe for human crews.

The iRobot PackBot employs technologies used previously in the design of "Rocky-7," which
served as a terrestrial test bed at JPL for the current twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
PackBot's structural features are modeled after Rocky-7, including the lightweight, high-torque
actuators that control the rover; and its strong, lightweight frame structure and sheet-metal
chassis.

PackBot's other "ancestor," called Urbie, was an urban reconnaissance robot with military and
disaster response applications. Urbie's lightweight structure and rugged features also made it
useful in emergency response situations; for example, at sites contaminated with radiation and
chemical spills, and at buildings damaged by earthquakes. Urbie's physical structure was
designed by iRobot Corp., Bedford, Mass., while JPL was responsible for the intelligent robot's
onboard sensors and vision algorithms, which helped the robot factor in obstacles and determine
an appropriate driving path. Following the success of Urbie's milestones, the team at iRobot
created its successor: PackBot.

Since 2002, iRobot has delivered variations of the PackBot model to the U.S. Army, U.S. Air
Force and U.S. Navy. The tactical robot's first military deployment was to Afghanistan in July
2002, to assist soldiers by providing "eyes and ears" in the most dangerous or inaccessible areas.
It was also used to search through debris at Ground Zero after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New
York.

Recently, iRobot provided two PackBots to help after the devastating March 11, 2011,
earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The PackBot models, currently taking radioactivity readings in
the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant buildings, are equipped with multiple
cameras and hazard material sensors. The images and readings provided by the PackBots
indicated radiation levels are still too high to allow human repair crews to safely enter the
buildings.

Urbie was a joint effort of the Defense Advanced Research Project's Agency's (DARPA)
Tactical Mobile Robot program, JPL, iRobot Corp., the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon
University, and the University of Southern California's Robotics Research Laboratory. JPL is
managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information on the history of the partnership between iRobot and JPL, visit:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2005/ps_1.html .


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NASA Invites Public to Journey Toward Interstellar Space

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSITUTE 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.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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

Event advisory: 2011-124B April 26, 2011

NASA Invites Public to Journey Toward Interstellar Space

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-124b&cid=release_2011-124b

NASA will hold a special NASA Science Update at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, April
28, to discuss the unprecedented journey of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft to the edge of our solar
system.

The event will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA
Television and streamed at http://www.nasa.gov . In addition, the event will be carried live on
Ustream, with a live chat box available, at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

After 33 years in space, the spacecraft are still operating and returning data from about 16 billion
kilometers (10 billion miles) away from our sun. The Voyagers also carry a collection of images and
sounds from Earth as a message to possible life elsewhere in the galaxy.

The participants are:
-- Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist and professor of physics, California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, Calif.
-- Ann Druyan, creative director, Voyager Interstellar Message Project; Carl Sagan's co-author and
widow
-- Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Merav Opher, Voyager guest investigator and assistant professor of astronomy, Boston University

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

For NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

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Thursday, April 21, 2011

JPL Tweetup Previews Missions: Mars, Jupiter and More

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

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

Stephanie L. Schierholz 202-358-4997
Headquarters, Washington
stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2011-125 April 21, 2011

JPL Tweetup Previews Missions: Mars, Jupiter and More

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-125&cid=release_2011-125

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will host a Tweetup for
approximately 120 Twitter followers on Monday, June 6.

With four space missions launching this year and an asteroid belt encounter nearly underway, 2011 will be one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Tweetup participants will interact with JPL scientists and engineers about these upcoming missions: Aquarius, to study ocean salinity; Grail, to study the moon's gravity field; Juno to Jupiter; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover. Participants also will learn about the Dawn mission and its upcoming encounter with the asteroid Vesta.

The Tweetup will include a tour of JPL, robotics demonstrations and a last chance to see the Curiosity
rover before it ships to Florida to prepare for a November launch. Tour stops will include the
Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where Curiosity is under construction, the mission control center of
NASA's Deep Space Network, and JPL's new Earth Science Visitor Center.

Tweetup participants also will mingle with fellow attendees and the staff behind the tweets on
@NASA, @NASAJPL, @MarsRovers, @AsteroidWatch and more.

Registration for the event opens at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, April 26, and it closes at
noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT) on Wednesday, April 27. For more information about the Tweetup and to
sign up, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup .

NASA Television will broadcast portions of the Tweetup on June 6 at:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-hd-tv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

Find all the ways to connect and collaborate with NASA at: http://www.nasa.gov/connect
For more information about JPL, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/jpl . JPL is managed for NASA by the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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NASA Orbiter Reveals Big Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

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

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

Maria Martinez 210-522-3305
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
maria.martinez@swri.org

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

News release: 2011-123 April 21, 2011

NASA Orbiter Reveals Big Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-123&cid=release_2011-123

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered the total amount of
atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet's axis varies. This process can
affect the stability of liquid water, if it exists on the Martian surface, and increase the frequency
and severity of Martian dust storms.

Researchers using the orbiter's ground-penetrating radar identified a large, buried deposit of
frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, at the Red Planet's south pole. The scientists suspect that much
of this carbon dioxide enters the planet's atmosphere and swells the atmosphere's mass when
Mars' tilt increases. The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

The newly found deposit has a volume similar to Lake Superior's nearly 3,000 cubic miles (about
12,000 cubic kilometers). The deposit holds up to 80 percent as much carbon dioxide as today's
Martian atmosphere. Collapse pits caused by dry ice sublimation and other clues suggest the
deposit is in a dissipating phase, adding gas to the atmosphere each year. Mars' atmosphere is
about 95 percent carbon dioxide, in contrast to Earth's much thicker atmosphere, which is less
than .04 percent carbon dioxide.

"We already knew there is a small perennial cap of carbon-dioxide ice on top of the water ice
there, but this buried deposit has about 30 times more dry ice than previously estimated," said
Roger Phillips of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Phillips is deputy team leader
for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Shallow Radar instrument and lead author of the report.

"We identified the deposit as dry ice by determining the radar signature fit the radio-wave
transmission characteristics of frozen carbon dioxide far better than the characteristics of frozen
water," said Roberto Seu of Sapienza University of Rome, team leader for the Shallow Radar
and a co-author of the new report. Additional evidence came from correlating the deposit to
visible sublimation features typical of dry ice.

"When you include this buried deposit, Martian carbon dioxide right now is roughly half frozen
and half in the atmosphere, but at other times it can be nearly all frozen or nearly all in the
atmosphere," Phillips said.

An occasional increase in the atmosphere would strengthen winds, lofting more dust and leading
to more frequent and more intense dust storms. Another result is an expanded area on the planet's
surface where liquid water could persist without boiling. Modeling based on known variation in
the tilt of Mars' axis suggests several-fold changes in the total mass of the planet's atmosphere
can happen on time frames of 100,000 years or less.

The changes in atmospheric density caused by the carbon-dioxide increase also would amplify
some effects of the changes caused by the tilt. Researchers plugged the mass of the buried
carbon-dioxide deposit into climate models for the period when Mars' tilt and orbital properties
maximize the amount of summer sunshine hitting the south pole. They found at such times,
global, year-round average air pressure is approximately 75 percent greater than the current level.

"A tilted Mars with a thicker carbon-dioxide atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect that tries to
warm the Martian surface, while thicker and longer-lived polar ice caps try to cool it," said co-
author Robert Haberle, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field,
Calif. "Our simulations show the polar caps cool more than the greenhouse warms. Unlike Earth,
which has a thick, moist atmosphere that produces a strong greenhouse effect, Mars' atmosphere
is too thin and dry to produce as strong a greenhouse effect as Earth's, even when you double its
carbon-dioxide content."

The Shallow Radar, one of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's six instruments, was provided by
the Italian Space Agency, and its operations are led by the Department of Information
Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications at Sapienza University of Rome. NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's
headquarters in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

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

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Ultraviolet Spotlight on Plump Stars in Tiny Galaxies

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

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

Feature: 2011-122 April 21, 2011

Ultraviolet Spotlight on Plump Stars in Tiny Galaxies

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-122&cid=release_2011-122

Astronomers using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer may be closer to knowing why
some of the most massive stellar explosions ever observed occur in the tiniest of galaxies.

"It's like finding a sumo wrestler in a little 'Smart Car,'" said Don Neill, a member of
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer team at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, and lead author of a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"The most powerful explosions of massive stars are happening in extremely low-mass
galaxies. New data are revealing that the stars that start out massive in these little galaxies
stay massive until they explode, while in larger galaxies they are whittled away as they
age, and are less massive when they explode," said Neill.

Over the past few years, astronomers using data from the Palomar Transient Factory, a
sky survey based at the ground-based Palomar Observatory near San Diego, have
discovered a surprising number of exceptionally bright stellar explosions in so-called
dwarf galaxies up to 1,000 times smaller than our Milky Way galaxy. Stellar explosions,
called supernovae, occur when massive stars -- some up to 100 times the mass of our sun -
- end their lives.

The Palomar observations may explain a mystery first pointed out by Neil deGrasse Tyson
and John Scalo when they were at the University of Austin Texas (Tyson is now the
director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, N.Y.). They noted that supernovae
were occurring where there seemed to be no galaxies at all, and they even proposed that
dwarf galaxies were the culprits, as the Palomar data now indicate.

Now, astronomers are using ultraviolet data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer to
further examine the dwarf galaxies. Newly formed stars tend to radiate copious amounts
of ultraviolet light, so the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, which has scanned much of the sky
in ultraviolet light, is the ideal tool for measuring the rate of star birth in galaxies.

The results show that the little galaxies are low in mass, as suspected, and have low rates
of star formation. In other words, the petite galaxies are not producing that many huge
stars.

"Even in these little galaxies where the explosions are happening, the big guys are rare,"
said co-author Michael Rich of UCLA, who is a member of the mission team.

In addition, the new study helps explain why massive stars in little galaxies undergo even
more powerful explosions than stars of a similar heft in larger galaxies like our Milky
Way. The reason is that low-mass galaxies tend to have fewer heavy atoms, such as
carbon and oxygen, than their larger counterparts. These small galaxies are younger, and
thus their stars have had less time to enrich the environment with heavy atoms.

According to Neill and his collaborators, the lack of heavy atoms in the atmosphere
around a massive star causes it to shed less material as it ages. In essence, the massive
stars in little galaxies are fatter in their old age than the massive stars in larger galaxies.
And the fatter the star, the bigger the blast that will occur when it finally goes supernova.
This, according to the astronomers, may explain why super supernovae are occurring in
the not-so-super galaxies.

"These stars are like heavyweight champions, breaking all the records," said Neill.

Added Rich, "These dwarf galaxies are especially interesting to astronomers, because
they are quite similar to the kinds of galaxies that may have been present in our young
universe, shortly after the Big Bang. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer has given us a
powerful tool for learning what galaxies were like when the universe was just a child."

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. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. 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 are online at
http://www.nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu .

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Watch JPL Earth Day Program 11:30 a.m. Today

Watch JPL Earth Day Program 11:30 a.m. Today

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

04.21.11 -- To celebrate Earth Day 2011, JPL will feature a live video program with personal stories from
JPL scientists. The program will run on Thursday, Apr. 21, 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. Pacific.

Schools and the general public are invited to watch the program here: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

Learn about and see spectacular pictures of spewing fires and shifting sands, the trembling Earth,
climate change and civilization, ancient rivers, and the coastal ocean of Southern California.

A special guest, Dr. Gary Shapiro, the first person to teach sign language to orangutans in their
natural habitat, will present information on the critically endangered orangutans and the Indonesian rainforests.


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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

NASA Marks Earth Day With Online Activities, Programs

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

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

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

Media advisory: 2011-121 April 20, 2011

NASA Marks Earth Day With Online Activities, Programs

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-121&cid=release_2011-121

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are
celebrating the 41st anniversary of Earth Day this week with several online activities to engage the
public in the agency's mission to use the vantage point of space to explore and protect our home
planet.

Among the activities are two Web chats. On Thursday, April 21, JPL will host a pre-Earth Day Web
video chat with a JPL scientist. Then on Earth Day, Friday, April 22, scientists involved in an
airborne campaign in Greenland to monitor Arctic ice cover will participate in a second Web chat.

NASA maintains the world's largest contingent of dedicated Earth scientists and engineers to lead
and assist other agencies in preserving the planet's environment.

For details on NASA Earth Day activities and new agency programs dedicated to expanding our
knowledge of our home planet, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthday .

Student Video Chat with a NASA Earth Scientist

Thursday, April 21 (10-10:30 a.m. PDT) -- The JPL Education Office is hosting a live Web video chat
with JPL scientist Annmarie Eldering, who will answer questions submitted in advance by middle
school students. Eldering is the deputy project scientist for NASA's upcoming Orbiting Carbon
Observatory 2 mission, which will measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The chat will be
broadcast live at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2/ .

NASA Chat: Live from the Top of the World

Friday, April 22 (noon-1 p.m. PDT) -- A team of Arctic explorers is in Greenland keeping a careful
eye on changes in the ice landscape. Chat online with NASA's Lora Koenig from Kangerlussuag,
Greenland, and Tom Wagner from NASA Headquarters in Washington about the Operation
IceBridge airborne mission. The chat window opens at 11:30 a.m. PDT for advance registration. The
chat will be broadcast live at: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/chat/live_from_greenland.html .

NASA Earth Day Video Contest 2011

Share your vision of what NASA's exploration of Earth means to you by creating a short YouTube
video. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., announced on Wednesday a contest
for the best video about discoveries or real-world benefits resulting from NASA's Earth science
program. Producers are encouraged to draw from NASA's extensive collection of public domain
Earth imagery. Submissions are due by May 27. For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth-videos.html .

Additional NASA Center Activities

Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., Thursday, April 21 (8 a.m.-10:30 a.m. PDT) -- Events
organized around the theme "Sustainability" include ceremonial tree planting, announcement of photo
contest winners, and exhibits by environmental vendors and organizations.

Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif., Wednesday-Friday, April 20-22 (3:30-4:30 p.m. PDT)
-- Employees can tour the "Sustainability Base," a new facility that has re-purposed NASA
technology designed for closed-loop systems in space. The project is a candidate for the platinum-plus
rating by the internationally recognized LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)
green building certification system. For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/sustainability-base/index.html .

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

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Cassini Sees Saturn Electric Link With Enceladus

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.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2011-120 April 20, 2011

Cassini Sees Saturn Electric Link With Enceladus

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-120&cid=release_2011-120

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA is releasing the first images and sounds of an electrical connection
between Saturn and one of its moons, Enceladus. The data collected by the agency's Cassini
spacecraft enable scientists to improve their understanding of the complex web of interaction between
the planet and its numerous moons. The results of the data analysis are published in the journals
Nature and Geophysical Research Letters.

Scientists previously theorized an electrical circuit should exist at Saturn. After analyzing data that
Cassini collected in 2008, scientists saw a glowing patch of ultraviolet light emissions near Saturn's
north pole that marked the presence of a circuit, even though the moon is 240,000 kilometers
(150,000 miles) away from the planet.

The patch occurs at the end of a magnetic field line connecting Saturn and its moon Enceladus. The
area, known as an auroral footprint, is the spot where energetic electrons dive into the planet's
atmosphere, following magnetic field lines that arc between the planet's north and south polar regions.

"The footprint discovery at Saturn is one of the most important fields and particle revelations from
Cassini and ultimately may help us understand Saturn's strange magnetic field," said Marcia Burton, a
Cassini fields and particles scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It gives
us the first visual connection between Saturn and one of its moons."

The auroral footprint measures approximately 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) by less than 400 kilometers
(250 miles), covering an area comparable to California or Sweden. At its brightest, the footprint shone
with an ultraviolet light intensity far less than Saturn's polar auroral rings, but comparable to the
faintest aurora visible at Earth without a telescope in the visible light spectrum. Scientists have not
found a matching footprint at the southern end of the magnetic field line.
Jupiter's active moon Io creates glowing footprints near Jupiter's north and south poles, so scientists
suspected there was an analogous electrical connection between Saturn and Enceladus. It is the only
known active moon in the Saturn system with jets spraying water vapor and organic particles into
space. For years, scientists used space telescopes to search Saturn's poles for footprints, but they
found none.

"Cassini fields and particles instruments found particle beams aligned with Saturn's magnetic field
near Enceladus, and scientists started asking if we could see an expected ultraviolet spot at the end of
the magnetic field line on Saturn," said Wayne Pryor, a lead author of the Nature study released
today, and Cassini co-investigator at Central Arizona College in Coolidge, Ariz. "We were delighted
to find the glow close to the 'bulls-eye' at the center of our target."

In 2008, Cassini detected a beam of energetic protons near Enceladus aligned with the magnetic field
and field-aligned electron beams. A team of scientists analyzed the data and concluded the electron
beams had sufficient energy flux to generate a detectable level of auroral emission at Saturn. A few
weeks later, Cassini captured images of an auroral footprint in Saturn's northern hemisphere. In 2009,
a group of Cassini scientists led by Donald Gurnett at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, detected
more complementary signals near Enceladus consistent with currents that travel from the moon to the
top of Saturn's atmosphere, including a hiss-like sound from the magnetic connection. That paper was
published in March in Geophysical Research Letters.

The water cloud above the Enceladus jets produces a massive, ionized "plasma" cloud through its
interactions with the magnetic bubble around Saturn. This cloud disturbs the magnetic field lines. The
footprint appears to flicker in these new data, so the rate at which Enceladus is spewing particles may
vary.

"The new data are adding fuel to the fire of some long-standing debates about this active little moon,"
said Abigail Rymer, the other lead author of the Nature study and a Cassini team scientist based at
the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Scientists have been
wondering whether the venting rate is variable, and these new data suggest that it is."

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. The Cassini orbiter and several
of its instruments were designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

To see a video and hear the sounds of the electrical connection, and to get more information about the
Cassini mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Thursday, April 14, 2011

WISE Delivers Millions of Galaxies, Stars, Asteroids

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

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

Feature: 2011-117 April 14, 2011

WISE Delivers Millions of Galaxies, Stars, Asteroids

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-117&cid=release_2011-117

Astronomers across the globe can now sift through hundreds of millions of galaxies, stars
and asteroids collected in the first bundle of data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer (WISE) mission.

"Starting today thousands of new eyes will be looking at WISE data, and I expect many
surprises," said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the mission's principal investigator.

WISE launched into space on Dec. 14, 2009 on a mission to map the entire sky in infrared
light with greatly improved sensitivity and resolution over its predecessors. From its polar
orbit, it scanned the skies about one-and-a-half times while collecting images taken at four
infrared wavelengths of light. It took more than 2.7 million images over the course of its
mission, capturing objects ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids relatively close to
Earth.

Like other infrared telescopes, WISE required coolant to chill its heat-sensitive detectors.
When this frozen hydrogen coolant ran out, as expected, in early October, 2010, two of its
four infrared channels were still operational. The survey was then extended for four more
months, with the goal of finishing its sweep for asteroids and comets in the main asteroid
belt of our solar system.

The mission's nearby discoveries included 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids
between Mars and Jupiter, and 133 near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are those asteroids
and comets with orbits that come within 28 million miles (about 45 million kilometers) of
Earth's path around the sun. The satellite went into hibernation in early February of this
year.

Today, WISE is taking the first major step in meeting its primary goal of delivering the
mission's trove of objects to astronomers. Data from the first 57 percent of the sky surveyed
is accessible through an online public archive. The complete survey, with improved data
processing, will be made available in the spring of 2012. A predecessor to WISE, the
Infrared Astronomical Satellite, served a similar role about 25 years ago, and those data are
still valuable to astronomers today. Likewise, the WISE legacy is expected to endure for
decades.

"We are excited that the preliminary data contain millions of newfound objects," said
Fengchuan Liu, the project manager for WISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. "But the mission is not yet over -- the real treasure is the final catalog
available a year from now, which will have twice as many sources, covering the entire sky
and reaching even deeper into the universe than today's release."

Astronomers will use WISE's infrared data to hunt for hidden oddities, and to study trends
in large populations of known objects. Survey missions often result in the unexpected
discoveries too, because they are looking everywhere in the sky rather than at known
targets. Data from the mission are also critical for finding the best candidates for follow-up
studies with other telescopes, including the European Space Agency's Herschel
observatory, which has important NASA contributions.

"WISE is providing the newest-generation 'address book' of the infrared universe with the
precise location and brightness of hundreds of millions of celestial objects," said Roc Cutri,
lead scientist for WISE data processing at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "WISE continues the long
tradition of infrared sky surveys supported by Caltech, stretching back to the 1969 Two
Micron Sky Survey."

So far, the WISE mission has released dozens of colorful images of the cosmos, in which
infrared light has been assigned colors we see with our eyes. The whole collection can be
seen at http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_images.html .

The public archive for astronomers is online at
http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/prelim/index.html . Instructions for astronomy
enthusiasts wanting to try their hand at using the archive are at
http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/wise_image_service.html .

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

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


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Fast-Rotating Asteroid Winks For Astronomer's Camera

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

Feature: 2011-118 April 14, 2011

Fast-Rotating Asteroid Winks For Astronomer's Camera

Video imaging of newly discovered asteroid 2011 GP59 shows the object appearing to blink on
and off about once every four minutes.

Amateur astronomers, including Nick James of Chelmsford, Essex, England, have captured
video of the interesting object. James generated this video of GP59 on the night of Monday,
April 11. The video, captured with an 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, is a compilation of
137 individual frames, each requiring 30 seconds of exposure. At the time, the asteroid was
approximately 3,356,000 kilometers (2,081,000 mile) distant. Since then, the space rock has
become something of a darling of the amateur astronomy community, with many videos
available. (Here is one recent posting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7wsAZNr56E )

"Usually, when we see an asteroid strobe on and off like that, it means that the body is elongated
and we are viewing it broadside along its long axis first, and then on its narrow end as it rotates
," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "GP59 is approximately 50 meters [240 feet] long, and
we think its period of rotation is about seven-and-a-half minutes. This makes the object's
brightness change every four minutes or so."

2011 GP59 was discovered the night of April 8/9 by astronomers with the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca in Andalusia, Spain. It will make its closest approach to Earth on April 15 at 19:09 UTC (12:09 p.m. PDT) at a distance just beyond the moon's orbit - about 533,000 kilometers (331,000 miles).

"Although newly discovered, the near-term orbital location of asteroid 2011 GP59 can be
accurately plotted," said Yeomans. "There is no possibility of the small space rock entering
Earth's atmosphere during this pass or for the foreseeable future."

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch .

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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Student Questions Needed: Join an Earth Day Video Chat With a NASA Scientist

Student Questions Needed: Join an Earth Day Video Chat With a NASA Scientist
This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

04.13.11 -- To celebrate Earth Day 2011, the Education Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, Calif., is hosting a live Web video chat where your students can ask a NASA/JPL scientist
questions emailed in advance. Questions should be on the topic of Earth science. Our chat is best suited
for students and afterschool groups in grades 4 - 6.

Our guest will be NASA/JPL research scientist Annmarie Eldering, who specializes in clouds, aerosols and
trace gases in Earth's atmosphere. She is currently the deputy project scientist for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2,
a NASA satellite mission now in development that will measure atmospheric carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced
greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate.

The live video chat will be streamed at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 on Thursday, April 21 at 10 a.m. PDT/ 1 p.m. EDT. The Web page
is open to the general public. The program will be archived on the same page.

Classrooms are strongly encouraged to visit the Web page in advance to make sure their school provides access.
We will run a video and audio feed all day on Wednesday, April 20 (starting at 9 a.m. PDT) so we also strongly
suggest schools visit the page that day.

Questions should be emailed to jplspaceeducation@gmail.com and must be received by Monday, April 18, noon PDT.
Questions should include school or group name, city and state. Due to resources, we cannot answer all questions but
will make every attempt to answer at least one question per class.

An example of our chats can be seen here (recent chat on earthquakes): http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13400346 .

Classrooms are also invited to share how they help Earth on this short interactive: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/earthday/earthdayflash.cfm .

Happy Earth Day!


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Friday, April 8, 2011

NASA's Jupiter-Bound Spacecraft Arrives in Florida

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

News release: 2011-113 April 08, 2011

NASA's Jupiter-Bound Spacecraft Arrives in Florida

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-113&cid=release_2011-113

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Juno spacecraft has arrived in Florida to begin final preparations for a launch
this summer. The spacecraft was shipped from Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, to the Astrotech
payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., today. The solar-powered Juno spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's
poles 33 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

"The Juno spacecraft and the team have come a long way since this project was first conceived in 2003," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator, based at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "We're only a few months away from a mission of discovery that could very well rewrite the books on not only how Jupiter was born, but how our solar system came into being."

Next Monday, Juno will be removed from its shipping container, the first of the numerous milestones to
prepare it for launch. Later that week, the spacecraft will begin functional testing to verify its state of health
after the road trip from Colorado. After this, the team will load updated flight software and perform a series
of mission readiness tests. These tests involve the entire spacecraft flight system, as well as the associated
science instruments and the ground data system.

Juno will be carried into space aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifting off from Launch Complex-41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch period opens Aug. 5, 2011, and extends through Aug. 26. For an Aug. 5 liftoff, the launch window opens at 8:39 a.m. PDT (11:39 am EDT) and remains open through 9:39 a.m. PDT (12:39 p.m. EDT).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for the principal
investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute at San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the
New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed
Martin Space Systems, Denver, is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency in Rome is contributing
an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment. Launch management for
the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in
Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Additional information about Juno is available at http://www.nasa.gov/juno .

-end-

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

George Diller 321-867-2468
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
george.h.diller@nasa.gov

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

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WISE Mission Spots 'Horseshoe' Asteroid

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

Feature: 2011-112 April 08, 2011

WISE Mission Spots 'Horseshoe' Asteroid

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-112&cid=release_2011-112

An asteroid recently discovered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) may
be a bit of an oddball. Most near-Earth asteroids -- NEAs for short -- have eccentric, or egg-
shaped, orbits that take the asteroids right through the inner solar system. The new object,
designated 2010 SO16, is different. Its orbit is almost circular such that it cannot come close to
any other planet in the solar system except Earth.

However, even though the asteroid rides around with Earth, it never gets that close.

"It keeps well away from Earth," said Apostolos "Tolis" Christou, who, together with David
Asher of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, analyzed the orbit of the body after it
was discovered in infrared images taken by WISE. "So well, in fact, that it has likely been in this
orbit for several hundred thousand years, never coming closer to our planet than 50 times the
distance to the moon."

The asteroid is one of a few that trace out a horseshoe shape relative to Earth. As the asteroid
approaches Earth, the planet's gravity causes the object to shift back into a larger orbit that
takes longer to go around the sun than Earth. Alternately, as Earth catches up with the asteroid,
the planet's gravity causes it to fall into a closer orbit that takes less time to go around the sun
than Earth. The asteroid therefore never completely passes our planet. This slingshot-like effect
results in a horseshoe-shaped path as seen from Earth, in which 2010 SO16 takes 175 years to
get from one end of the horseshoe to the other.

"The origins of this object could prove to be very interesting," said Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., the principal investigator of NEOWISE, which is the asteroid- and comet-hunting portion of the WISE survey mission. "We are really excited that the astronomy community is already finding treasures in the NEOWISE data that have been released so far."

NEOWISE finished its one complete sweep of the solar system in early February of this year.
Data on the orbits of asteroids and comets detected by the project, including near-Earth
objects, are catalogued at the NASA-funded International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet
Center, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

A full story from the Armagh Observatory, including animations, is online at
http://www.arm.ac.uk/press/2011/aac_horseshoe_orbit.html .

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

#2011-112

-end-

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

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Thursday, April 7, 2011

New Theory: Titan Shaped By Weather, Not Ice Volcanoes

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

Feature: 2011-111 April 07, 2011

New Theory: Titan Shaped By Weather, Not Ice Volcanoes

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-111&cid=release_2011-111

Have the surface and belly of Saturn's smog-shrouded moon, Titan, recently simmered like
a chilly, bubbling cauldron with ice volcanoes, or has this distant moon gone cold? In a
newly published analysis, a pair of NASA scientists analyzing data collected by the
Cassini spacecraft suggest Titan may be much less geologically active than some
scientists have thought.

In the paper, published in the April 2011 edition of the journal Icarus, scientists conclude
Titan's interior may be cool and dormant and incapable of causing active ice volcanoes.

"It would be fantastic to find strong evidence that clearly shows Titan has an internal heat
source that causes ice volcanoes and lava flows to form," said Jeff Moore, lead author of
the paper and a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
"But we find that the evidence presented to date is unconvincing, and recent studies of
Titan's interior conducted by geophysicists and gravity experts also weaken the possibility
of volcanoes there."

Scientists agree that Titan shows evidence of having lakes of liquid methane and ethane,
and valleys carved by these exotic liquids, as well as impact craters. However, a debate
continues to brew about how to interpret the Cassini data on Titan. Some scientists
theorize ice volcanoes exist and suggest energy from an internal heat source may have
caused ice to rise and release methane vapors as it reached Titan's surface.

But in the new paper, the authors conclude that the only features on Titan's surface that
have been unambiguously identified were created by external forces -- such as objects
hitting the surface and creating craters; wind and rain pummeling its surface; and the
formation of rivers and lakes.

"Titan is a fascinating world," said Robert Pappalardo, a research scientist at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and former project scientist for NASA's Cassini
mission. "Its uniqueness comes from its atmosphere and organic lakes, but in this study,
we find no strong evidence for icy volcanism on Titan."

In December 2010, a group of Cassini scientists presented new topographic data on an
area of Titan called Sotra Facula, which they think makes the best case yet for a possible
volcanic mountain that once erupted ice on Titan. Although Moore and Pappalardo do not
explicitly consider this recent topographic analysis in their paper, they do not find the
recent analysis of Sotra Facula to be convincing so far. It remains to be seen whether
ongoing analyses of Sotra Facula can change minds.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the only known moon to have a dense atmosphere,
composed primarily of nitrogen, with two to three percent methane. One goal of the Cassini
mission is to find an explanation for what, if anything, might be maintaining this
atmosphere.

Titan's dense atmosphere makes its surface very difficult to study with visible-light
cameras, but infrared instruments and radar signals can peer through the haze and
provide information about both the composition and shape of the surface.

"Titan is most akin to Jupiter's moon Callisto, if Callisto had weather," Moore added. "Every
feature we have seen on Titan can be explained by wind, rain and meteorite impacts,
rather than from internal heating."

Callisto is almost the exact same size as Titan. It has a cratered appearance, and because
of its cool interior, its surface features are not affected by internal forces. Moore and
Pappalardo conclude that Titan also might have a cool interior, with only external
processes like wind, rain and impacts shaping its surface.

The Cassini spacecraft, currently orbiting Saturn, continues to make fly-bys of Titan.
Scientists will continue to explore Titan's mysteries, including investigations of the
changes in the landscapes.

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,
Washington. The Cassini orbiter and several of its instruments were 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 .

Fore more information about possible ice volcanoes on Titan, visit
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-416 and
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-237 .

For more information about Alan Howard's Landform Evolution Computer Simulation
Modeling at the University of Virginia, visit http://erode.evsc.virginia.edu/marsfluv.htm .

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.?
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Rachel Hoover 650-604-0643
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Rachel.hoover@nasa.gov


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NASA Telescope Ferrets Out Planet-Hunting Targets

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

Written by Adam Hadhazy

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

Feature: 2011-110 April 7, 2011

NASA Telescope Ferrets Out Planet-Hunting Targets

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-110&cid=release_2011-110

Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy
Evolution Explorer satellite. The technique should help in the hunt for planets that lie beyond our
solar system, because nearby, hard-to-see stars could very well be home to the easiest-to-see alien
planets.

The glare of bright, shining stars has frustrated most efforts at visualizing distant worlds. So far,
only a handful of distant planets, or exoplanets, have been directly imaged. Small, newborn stars
are less blinding, making the planets easier to see, but the fact that these stars are dim means they
are hard to find in the first place. Fortunately, the young stars emit more ultraviolet light than
their older counterparts, which makes them conspicuous to the ultraviolet-detecting Galaxy
Evolution Explorer.

"We've discovered a new technique of using ultraviolet light to search for young, low-mass stars
near the Earth," said David Rodriguez, a graduate student of astronomy at UCLA, and lead
author of a recent study. "These young stars make excellent targets for future direct imaging of
exoplanets."

Tantrum-Throwing Baby Stars

Young stars, like human children, tend to be a bit unruly -- they spout a greater proportion of
energetic X-rays and ultraviolet light than more mature stars. In some cases, X-ray surveys can
pick out these youngsters due to the "racket" they cause. However, many smaller, less "noisy"
baby stars perfect for exoplanet imaging studies have gone undetected except in the most
detailed X-ray surveys. To date, such surveys have covered only a small percentage of the sky.

Rodriguez and his team figured the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, which has scanned about three-
quarters of the sky in ultraviolet light, could fill this gap. Astronomers compared readings from
the telescope with optical and infrared data to look for the telltale signature of rambunctious
junior stars. Follow-up observations of 24 candidates identified in this manner determined that
17 of the stars showed clear signs of youth, validating the team's approach.

"The Galaxy Evolution Explorer can readily select young, low-mass stars that are too faint to turn
up in all-sky X-ray surveys, which makes the telescope an incredibly useful tool," Rodriguez said.

Cool, Red and in the Neighborhood

Astronomers call the low-mass stars in question "M-class" stars. Also known as red dwarfs, these
stars glow a relatively cool crimson color compared to the hotter oranges and yellows of stars like
our sun, and the whites and blues of the most scorching stars. With data from the Galaxy
Evolution Explorer, astronomers could reap a bounty of these red dwarfs still in their cosmic
youth, under 100 million years old.

In many ways, these stars represent a best-case scenario for the direct imaging of exoplanets.
They are close and in clear lines-of-sight, which generally makes viewing easier. Their low mass
means they are dimmer than heavier stars, so their light is less likely to mask the feeble light of a
planet. And because they are young stars, their planets are freshly formed, and thus warmer and
brighter than older planetary bodies.

The Better to See Planets With

So far, only a handful of the more than 500 exoplanets on record have actually been "seen" by
our ground- and space-based telescopes. The vast majority of foreign worlds have instead turned
up via indirect means. One common technique, for instance, relies on detecting the slight
gravitational "wobbles" exoplanets impart to their host stars. Another technique, the "transit
method," registers the tiny dip in a star's light as an exoplanet crosses in front of it relative to our
vantage point. NASA's Kepler mission, in just its first four months of operations, has already
come up with a list of more than 1,200 candidate exoplanets using the transit method.

At a very basic level, directly imaging an exoplanet is worthwhile because, after all, "seeing is
believing," Rodriguez said. But catching a glimpse of an exoplanet also opens up novel scientific
avenues.

Direct imaging is well suited for seeing big planets circling host stars at considerable distances,
comparable to Uranus and Neptune in our solar system. Observing such arrangements is useful
for testing concepts of solar system evolution, Rodriguez said. Plus, gleaning details about the
atmospheres of imaged exoplanets is less difficult than indirectly investigating worlds that transit
their stars.

As for actually imaging clouds or surface features of exoplanets, however, that will have to wait.
Current images of exoplanets, while full of information, resemble fuzzy dots. But as technology
advances, ever more information about our close-by planetary brethren will emerge.

Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission could also reveal stars
that would make good candidates for imaging planets. Its all-sky maps will allow scientists to
pick out nearby, young stars surrounded by warm disks of planetary debris that glow with
infrared light. Such stars are similar to the ones where planets have already been successfully
imaged.

The new study was published in the February issue of The Astrophysical Journal and includes co-
authors Mike Bessell (Australian National University), Ben Zuckerman (UCLA), and Joel
Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology).

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission
and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. Caltech manages JPL for
NASA. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by NASA's
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.

Additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer are online at
http://www.galex.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/galex .

More information on NASA's planet-hunting efforts is online at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

For NASA's Aquarius, Quest for Salt a Global Endeavor

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

Feature: 2011-109 April 06, 2011

For NASA's Aquarius, Quest for Salt a Global Endeavor

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-109&cid=release_2011-109

With more than a few stamps on its passport, NASA's Aquarius instrument on the
Argentinian Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC)-D spacecraft will soon embark on
its space mission to "taste" Earth's salty ocean.

After a journey of development and assembly through NASA facilities; a technology center
in Bariloche, Argentina; and testing chambers in Brazil, the Aquarius instrument, set to
measure the ocean's surface salinity, recently made the trip from São José dos Campos,
Brazil, to California's Vandenberg Air Force Base for final integration and testing before its
scheduled launch on June 9.

Aquarius will map the concentration of dissolved salt at the ocean's surface, information
that scientists will use to study the ocean's role in the global water cycle and how this is
linked to ocean currents and climate. Sea surface temperature has been monitored by
satellites for decades, but it is both temperature and salinity that determine the density of
the surface waters of the ocean. Aquarius will provide fundamentally new ocean surface
salinity data to give scientists a better understanding of the density-driven circulation; how
it is tied to changes in rainfall and evaporation, or the melting and freezing of ice; and its
effect on climate variability.

"The ocean is essentially Earth's thermostat. It stores most of the heat, and what we need
to understand is how do changes in salinity affect the 3-D circulation of the ocean," said
Gene Feldman, Aquarius Ground System and Mission Operations manager at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The development of the Aquarius mission began more than 10 years ago as a joint effort
between Goddard and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. In 2008,
Goddard engineers completed the Aquarius microwave radiometer instrument, which is
the key component for measuring salinity from space.

"The radiometer is the most accurate and stable radiometer built for sensing of Earth from
space. It's a one-of-a-kind instrument," said Shannon Rodriguez-Sanabria, a microwave
communications specialist at Goddard.

JPL built Aquarius' scatterometer instrument, a microwave radar sensor that scans the
ocean's surface to measure the effect wind speed has on the radiometer measurements.
The radiometer and scatterometer instruments, along with a 2.5-by-3-meter (8.25-by-10-
foot) elliptical antenna reflector and many other systems, have been integrated together at
JPL to form the complete Aquarius instrument. Other instruments aboard the SAC-D
spacecraft are contributions from Argentina, France, Canada and Italy.

In June 2009, Aquarius was flown via a U.S. Air Force cargo jet to San Carlos de
Bariloche, Argentina, a destination known for its natural scenery of blue lakes and verdant
mountains, to be integrated with Argentina's SAC-D spacecraft. A year later, the fully
assembled spacecraft and all the instruments now referred to as the "Aquarius/SAC-D
Observatory" were shipped to Brazil. There, engineers began a nine-month campaign of
alignment, electromagnetic, vibration, and thermal vacuum testing to ensure it will survive
the rigors of launch and space.

JPL will manage the Aquarius mission through Aquarius' commissioning phase,
scheduled to last 45 days after launch. Goddard will then manage the Aquarius instrument
operations during the mission. Argentina's Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales
(CONAE) will operate the spacecraft and download all of the data collected by Aquarius
several times per day. Goddard is responsible for producing the Aquarius science data
products. JPL will manage the data archive and distribution to scientists worldwide.

Aquarius will collect data continuously as it flies in a near-polar orbit and circles Earth 14 to
15 times each day. The field of view of the instrument is 390 kilometers (242 miles) wide,
and it will provide a global map every seven days. The data will be compiled to generate
more accurate monthly averages during the mission, which is designed to last a minimum
of three years.

For more information about Aquarius, please visit http://aquarius.nasa.gov/ .

Melissa Quijada
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

2011-109

-end-

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


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Monday, April 4, 2011

NASA's Spitzer Discovers Time-Delayed Jets Around Young Star

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

Feature: 2011-107 April 04, 2011

NASA's Spitzer Discovers Time-Delayed Jets Around Young Star

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-107&cid=release_2011-107

Astronomers have discovered that two symmetrical jets shooting away from opposite sides of a
blossoming star are experiencing a time delay: knots of gas and dust from one jet blast off four-and-
a-half years later than identical knots from the other jet.

The finding, which required the infrared vision of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is helping
astronomers understand how jets are produced around forming stars, including those resembling our
sun when it was young.

"More studies are needed to determine if other jets have time delays," said Alberto Noriega-Crespo of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is a co-author of the new study to be published in the April 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Now we know that in at least one case, there appears to be a delay, which tells us that some sort of communication may be going on between the jets that takes time to occur."

Jets are an active phase in a young star's life. A star begins as a collapsing, roundish cloud of gas and
dust. By ejecting supersonic jets of gas, the cloud slows down its spinning. As material falls onto the
growing star, it develops a surrounding disk of swirling material and twin jets that shoot off from
above and below the disk, like a spinning top.

Once the star ignites and shines with starlight, the jets will die off and the disk will thin out. Ultimately, planets may clump together out of material left in the spinning disk.

The discovery of the time delay, in the jets called Herbig-Haro 34, has also led the astronomers to
narrow in on the size of the zone from which the jets originate. The new Spitzer observations limit
this zone to a circle around the young star with a radius of 3 astronomical units. An astronomical unit
is the distance between our sun and Earth. This is about 10 times smaller than previous estimates.

"Where we stand today on Earth was perhaps once a very violent place where high-velocity gas and
dust were ejected from the disk circling around our very young sun," said Alex Raga of the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the first author of the paper. "If so, the formation of
planets like Earth depends on how and when this phenomenon ended. Essentially, every star like our
own sun has gone through a similar cloud-disk-jets formation process."

One of the jets in Herbig-Haro 34 had been studied extensively for years, but the other remained
hidden behind a dark cloud. Spitzer's sensitive infrared vision was able to pierce this cloud, revealing
the obscured jet in greater detail than ever before. Spitzer images show that the newfound jet is
perfectly symmetrical to its twin, with identical knots of ejected material.

This symmetry turned out to be key to the discovery of the jets' time delay. By measuring the exact distances from the knots to the star, the astronomy team was able to figure out that, for every knot of material punched out by one jet, a similar knot is shot out in the opposite direction 4.5 years later. This calculation also depended on the speed of the jets, which was known from previous studies by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Other symmetrical jets similar to Herbig-Haro 34 have been observed closely before, but it is not clear if they are also experiencing time delays.

The astronomers say that some kind of communication is going on between the Herbig-Haro 34 jets,
likely carried by sound waves. Knowing the length of the time delay and the speed of sound
allowed them to calculate the maximum size of the jet-making zone.

The astronomy team is currently analyzing other jets imaged by Spitzer, looking for more evidence of
time delays.

The Spitzer observations were made before it used up its liquid coolant in May 2009 and began its
warm mission.

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

#2011-107

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

-end-


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Educator Workshop: The Water Cycle, Ocean Circulation and Climate

Educator Workshop: The Water Cycle, Ocean Circulation and Climate
This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

04.04.11 -- To celebrate the upcoming launch of the Aquarius/SAC-D satellite, a workshop for
K - 12 educators will be held at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, on June 3 - 4, 2011.
The free workshop is sponsored by the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE).

Aquarius will employ advanced technologies to make NASA's first space-based measurements of
ocean salinity across the globe - an important observation for ocean and climate studies. From 650
kilometers (400 miles) above Earth's surface, Aquarius will detect changes in ocean salinity as small
as a "pinch" of salt in a gallon of water.

Day 1 of the workshop will feature NASA scientists who will work collaboratively with educators to examine
connections between the water cycle, ocean circulation, climate and sea surface salinity. Using an online
Concept Map Builder, the scientist/educator teams will develop concept maps to enable effective
communication of these connections.

On Day 2, educators will tour the JPL facility, attach scientist-vetted content (e.g., animations and images,
news items) to their online concept maps and conduct "hands on" activities that support workshop themes.

Applications are due by Friday, May 6, 2011.

For registration details, go to http://cosee.umaine.edu/programs/nasaaquarius/ .

For directions to JPL, go to http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/maps.cfm .

- end -


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Friday, April 1, 2011

NASA Airborne Radar Set to Image Hawaiian Volcanoes

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

Beth Hagenauer 661-276-7960
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.
Beth.hagenauer@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-105 April 1, 2011

NASA Airborne Radar Set to Image Hawaiian Volcanoes

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-105&cid=release_2011-105

PASADENA, Calif. – The Kilauea volcano that recently erupted on the Big Island of Hawaii will be
the target for a NASA study to help scientists better understand processes occurring under Earth's
surface.

A NASA Gulfstream-III aircraft equipped with a synthetic aperture radar developed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is scheduled to depart Sunday, April 3, from the Dryden
Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., to the Big Island for a nine-day mission.

The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, uses a technique called
interferometric synthetic aperture radar that sends pulses of microwave energy from the aircraft to the
ground to detect and measure very subtle deformations in Earth's surface, such as those caused by
earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and glacier movements.

As the Gulfstream-III flies at an altitude of about 12,500 meters (41,000 feet), the radar, located in a
pod under the aircraft's belly, will collect data over Kilauea. The UAVSAR's first data acquisitions
over this volcanic region took place in January 2010, when the radar flew over the volcano daily for a
week. The UAVSAR detected deflation of Kilauea's caldera over one day, part of a series of
deflation-inflation events observed at Kilauea as magma is pumped into the volcano's east rift zone.

This month's flights will repeat the 2010 flight paths to an accuracy of within 5 meters, or about 16.5
feet, assisted by a Platform Precision Autopilot designed by engineers at NASA's Dryden Flight
Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. By comparing these camera-like images,
interferograms are formed that reveal changes in Earth's surface.

Between March 5 and 11, 2011, a spectacular fissure eruption occurred along the east rift zone.
Satellite radar imagery captured the progression of this volcanic event.

"The April 2011 UAVSAR flights will capture the March 2011 fissure eruption surface displacements
at high resolution and from multiple viewing directions, giving us an improved resolution of the
magma injected into the east rift zone that caused the eruption," said JPL research scientist Paul
Lundgren.

This injection of magma takes the form of a dike, a thin blade-like sheet of magma extending from
the surface to several kilometers depth, with an opening of only a few meters.

"Our goal is to be able to deploy the UAVSAR on short notice to better understand and aid in
responding to hazards from Kilauea and other volcanoes in the Pacific region covered by this study,"
Lundgren added.

For more on UAVSAR, visit: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov . For more information about NASA's G-III
Earth science research aircraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-089-
DFRC.html
.

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

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