NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Begins New Vesta Mapping Orbit

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

News release: 2011-307 Sept. 30 2011

NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Begins New Vesta Mapping Orbit

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-307&cid=release_2011-307

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Dawn spacecraft has completed a gentle spiral into its
new science orbit for an even closer view of the giant asteroid Vesta. Dawn began
sending science data on Sept. 29 from this new orbit, known as the high altitude mapping
orbit (HAMO).

In this orbit, the average distance from the spacecraft to the Vesta surface is 420 miles
(680 kilometers), which is four times closer than the previous survey orbit. The
spacecraft will operate in the same basic manner as it did in the survey orbit. When Dawn
is over Vesta's dayside, it will point its science instruments to the giant asteroid and
acquire data, and when the spacecraft flies over the nightside, it will beam that data back
to Earth.

Perhaps the most notable difference in the new orbit is the frequency with which Dawn
circles Vesta. In survey orbit, it took Dawn three days to make its way around the
asteroid. Now in HAMO, the spacecraft completes the same task in a little over 12 hours.
HAMO is scheduled to last about 30 Earth days, during which Dawn will circle Vesta
more than 60 times. For about 10 of those 30 days, Dawn will peer straight down at the
exotic landscape below it during the dayside passages. For about 20 days, the spacecraft
will view the surface at multiple angles.

Scientists will combine the pictures to create topographic maps, revealing the heights of
mountains, the depths of craters and the slopes of plains. This will help scientists
understand the geological processes that shaped Vesta.

HAMO, the most complex and intensive science campaign at Vesta, has three primary
goals: to map Vesta's illuminated surface in color, provide stereo data, and acquire
visible and infrared mapping spectrometer data. In addition, it will allow improved
measurements of Vesta's gravity.

Dawn launched in September 2007 and arrived at Vesta in July 2011. Since beginning its
first survey orbit in August, Dawn has been extensively imaging this intriguing world,
sending back a bounty of images and other data. NASA-funded scientists and European
scientists on the Dawn mission team will present a wealth of new findings at the joint
meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences and the
European Planetary Science Congress next week at La Cite Internationale des Congres
Nantes Metropole, Nantes, France.

These findings about the giant asteroid Vesta will include information about the new
coordinate system and official names of Vesta's prominent features.

A Dawn mission news conference will be held Monday, Oct. 3, 2011 at 12:15 p.m. CEST
(3:15 a.m. PDT/6:15 a.m. EDT). The Division for Planetary Sciences will provide live
Web streaming of this news conference, at:
http://meetings.copernicus.org/epsc-dps2011/webstreaming/monday.html

"The team has been in awe of what they have seen on the surface of Vesta," said
Christopher Russell, Dawn principal investigator, at UCLA. "We are sharing those
discoveries with the greater scientific community and with the public."

Following a year at Vesta, the spacecraft will depart in July 2012 for Ceres, where it will
arrive in 2015. Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Dawn is a project
of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital
Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace
Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency
and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission
team.

The image and more information about the Dawn mission are online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/dawn . To follow the mission on Twitter, visit:
http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn

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NASA Selects Science Investigations For Concept Studies

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

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673/Jane Platt 818-354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2011-305 Sept. 29, 2011

NASA Selects Science Investigations For Concept Studies

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-305&cid=release_2011-305

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has selected 11 science proposals, including one from the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, for evaluation as potential future science missions. The proposals outline
prospective missions to study the Earth's atmosphere, the sun, the Milky Way galaxy, and Earth-like
planets around nearby stars.

The selections were made from responses to Announcements of Opportunity for Explorer Missions
and Explorer Missions of Opportunity released by the agency last November. The proposals were
judged to have the best science value and feasible development plans.

"NASA continues to seek opportunities to push the cutting edge of science," said Paul Hertz, chief
scientist for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "Innovative proposals like these will
help us better understand our solar system and the universe."

Five Explorer Mission proposals were selected from 22 submitted in February. Each team will
receive $1 million to conduct an 11-month mission concept study. Mission costs are capped at $200
million each, excluding the launch vehicle. In addition, one Explorer Mission proposal was selected
for technology development and will receive $600,000. Five Mission of Opportunity proposals were
selected from 20 submissions. Each will receive $250,000 to conduct an 11-month implementation
concept study. Mission costs are capped at $55 million each.

Following the detailed mission concept studies, NASA plans to select up to two of the Explorer
Mission proposals and one or more of the five Mission of Opportunity proposals in February 2013.
The missions would then proceed toward flight and some could launch by 2016.

The selected Explorer Mission proposals are:

-Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) Thomas Immel, Principal Investigator (PI), University of
California, Berkeley -- The mission would fly instruments to understand the extreme variability in
our Earth's ionosphere, which can interfere with communications and geopositioning signals.

-Fast INfrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer (FINESSE) Mark Swain, PI, Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. -- This proposal would use a space telescope to survey more than 200
planets around other stars. This would be the first mission dedicated to finding out what comprises
exoplanet atmospheres, what conditions or processes are responsible for their composition, and how
our solar system fits into the larger family of planets.

-Observatory for Heteroscale Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling (OHMIC) James Burch, PI,
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio -- The mission would use a pair of spacecraft flying in
formation to study the processes that provide energy to power space weather storms. These storms
create auroras and other electromagnetic activity that can impact orbiting spacecraft operations.

-Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) George Ricker, PI, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass. -- Using an array of telescopes, TESS would perform an all-sky
survey to discover transiting exoplanets, ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, in orbit around the
nearest and brightest stars in the sky. The mission's primary goal would be to identify terrestrial
planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars.

-Atmosphere-Space Transition Region Explorer (ASTRE) Robert Pfaff Jr., PI, NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. -- The mission would study the interaction between the Earth's
atmosphere and the ionized gases of space. By flying excursions deep into the Earth's upper
atmosphere, its measurements would improve satellite drag models and show how space-induced
currents in electric power grids originate and evolve with time.

The selected Explorer Mission of Opportunity proposals are:

-Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) Richard Eastes, PI, University of Central
Florida, Orlando -- This would involve an imaging instrument that would fly on a commercial
communications satellite in geostationary orbit to image the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere.

-Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) Keith Gendreau, PI, Goddard -- This mission
would place an X-ray timing instrument on the International Space Station (ISS) to explore the exotic
states of matter within neutron stars and reveal their interior and surface compositions.

-Coronal Physics Investigator (CPI) John Kohl, PI, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory,
Cambridge -- A solar telescope would be mounted on the ISS to investigate the processes that
produce the sun's fast and slow solar wind.

-Gal/Xgal U/LDB Spectroscopic/Stratospheric THz Observatory (GUSSTO) Christopher Walker, PI,
University of Arizona, Tucson -- This mission would launch a high altitude balloon with a one-meter
telescope to provide a comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of our Milky Way galaxy
and one of our galaxy's companion galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

-Ion Mass Spectrum Analyzer for SCOPE (IMSA), Lynn Kistler PI, University of New Hampshire,
Durham -- This partner mission of opportunity would provide a composition instrument to the
Japanese cross-Scale Coupling in the Plasma universE (SCOPE) mission. SCOPE will study
fundamental space plasma processes including particle acceleration, magnetic reconnection, and
plasma turbulence.

The proposal selected for technology development funding is:

-The Exoplanetary Circumstellar Environments and Disk Explorer (EXCEDE), Glenn Schneider, PI,
University of Arizona, Tucson – The technology development effort will enable studies of the
formation, evolution, and architectures of exoplanetary systems through direct imaging.

The Explorer program is the oldest continuous program at NASA. It is designed to provide frequent,
low-cost access to space using PI-led space science investigations relevant to the agency's
astrophysics and heliophysics programs. Initiated with the Explorer 1 launch in 1958 that discovered
the Earth's radiation belts and including the Cosmic Background Explorer mission that led to Nobel
prizes for their investigators, the Explorer program has launched more than 90 missions. It is
managed by Goddard for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the Explorer program, visit: http://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov .

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena.

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NASA Space Telescope Finds Fewer Asteroids Near Earth

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

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

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

News release: 2011-304 Sept. 29, 2011

NASA Space Telescope Finds Fewer Asteroids Near Earth

PASADENA, Calif. -- New observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE,
show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought.
The findings also indicate NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids,
meeting a goal agreed to with Congress in 1998.

Astronomers now estimate there are roughly 19,500 -- not 35,000 -- mid-size near-Earth asteroids.
Scientists say this improved understanding of the population may indicate the hazard to Earth could
be somewhat less than previously thought. However, the majority of these mid-size asteroids remain
to be discovered. More research also is needed to determine if fewer mid-size objects (between 330
and 3,300-feet wide) also mean fewer potentially hazardous asteroids, those that come closest to
Earth.

The results come from the most accurate census to date of near-Earth asteroids, the space rocks that
orbit within 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the sun into Earth's orbital vicinity. WISE
observed infrared light from those in the middle to large-size category. The survey project, called
NEOWISE, is the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission. Study results appear in the
Astrophysical Journal.

"NEOWISE allowed us to take a look at a more representative slice of the near-Earth asteroid
numbers and make better estimates about the whole population," said Amy Mainzer, lead author of
the new study and principal investigator for the NEOWISE project at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's like a population census, where you poll a small group of people
to draw conclusions about the entire country."

WISE scanned the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light between January 2010 and February
2011, continuously snapping pictures of everything from distant galaxies to near-Earth asteroids and
comets. NEOWISE observed more than 100 thousand asteroids in the main belt between Mars and
Jupiter, in addition to at least 585 near Earth.

WISE captured a more accurate sample of the asteroid population than previous visible-light surveys
because its infrared detectors could see both dark and light objects. It is difficult for visible-light
telescopes to see the dim amounts of visible-light reflected by dark asteroids. Infrared-sensing
telescopes detect an object's heat, which is dependent on size and not reflective properties.

Though the WISE data reveal only a small decline in the estimated numbers for the largest near-Earth
asteroids, which are 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) and larger, they show 93 percent of the estimated
population have been found. This fulfills the initial "Spaceguard" goal agreed to with Congress.
These large asteroids are about the size of a small mountain and would have global consequences if
they were to strike Earth. The new data revise their total numbers from about 1,000 down to 981, of
which 911 already have been found. None of them represents a threat to Earth in the next few
centuries. It is believed that all near-Earth asteroids approximately 6 miles (10 kilometers) across, as
big as the one thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs, have been found.

"The risk of a really large asteroid impacting the Earth before we could find and warn of it has been
substantially reduced," said Tim Spahr, the director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The situation is different for the mid-size asteroids, which could destroy a metropolitan area if they
were to impact in the wrong place. The NEOWISE results find a larger decline in the estimated
population for these bodies than what was observed for the largest asteroids. So far, the Spaceguard
effort has found and is tracking more than 5,200 near-Earth asteroids 330 feet or larger, leaving more
than an estimated 15,000 still to discover. In addition, scientists estimate there are more than a
million unknown smaller near-Earth asteroids that could cause damage if they were to impact Earth.

"NEOWISE was just the latest asset NASA has used to find Earth's nearest neighbors," said Lindley
Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters
in Washington. "The results complement ground-based observer efforts over the past 12 years. These
observers continue to track these objects and find even more."

WISE is managed and operated by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at the University of California, Los Angeles. The WISE
science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft
was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data
processing occur at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of
Technology.

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

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150 of NASA's Twitter Followers Will Be Invited to Mars Rover Launch

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: 2011-302 Sept. 28, 2011

150 of NASA's Twitter Followers Will Be Invited to Mars Rover Launch

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-302&cid=release_2011-302

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on
Nov. 23 and 25 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Tweetup is expected to culminate
in the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V
541 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch window is scheduled to open at 7:21 a.m. PST
(10:21 a.m. EST) on Nov. 25.

The Tweetup will provide NASA's social media followers with the opportunity to tour Kennedy Space
Center; speak with scientists and engineers; and, if all goes as scheduled, view the spacecraft launch.
The event also will provide participants the opportunity to meet fellow tweeps and members of NASA's
social media team.

Curiosity's arrival at the Red Planet is anticipated in August 2012 at Gale crater. During the two-year
prime mission, the rover will investigate whether a selected area of Mars offered environmental
conditions favorable for microbial life and for preserving evidence about life if it existed.

Mars Science Laboratory is the fourth space mission launching this year managed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The first three are Aquarius, launched June 10 to study ocean
salinity; Juno, launched Aug. 5 to study the origins and interior of Jupiter; and the twin GRAIL orbiters,
which departed for the moon on Sept. 10.

Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at
Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Tweetup registration opens at 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) on Wed, Oct. 5, and closes at 9 a.m. PDT (noon
EST) on Fri., Oct. 7. NASA will randomly select 150 participants from online registrations.

For more information and rules about the Tweetup and registration, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

For information about connecting and collaborating with NASA, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/connect

For information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the Mars Curiosity mission on social media via Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/MarsCuriosity and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MarsCuriosity .

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JPL Participates in Space-Themed Corn Maze

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

Courtney O'Connor 818-354-2274
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Courtney.M.O'Connor@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2011-303 Sept. 28, 2011

JPL Participates in Space-Themed Corn Maze

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-303&cid=release_2011-303

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is joining forces with Utah's
original corn maze, Cornbelly's Corn Maze and Pumpkin Fest, for a kickoff celebration
on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

John Callas, project manger for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers at JPL, will appear at
the grand opening festivities of an autumn corn maze celebrating the U.S. space program.
The weekend will be filled with interactive displays and activities brought in by JPL,
including an exhibit featuring a replica of a Mars rover, as well as a NASA-designed text
message and QR code game inside the maze.

This event is part of Space Farm 7, an outreach project celebrating NASA's achievements
through agri-tourism events taking place throughout the nation. The goal of the project is
to educate and inspire children about U.S. space exploration efforts and achievements.

The seven participating farms around the country planted and designed NASA-themed
corn mazes. Cornbelly's maze design depicts a Mars rover alongside an image of the
solar system, a nod to the fact that JPL has built spacecraft that have visited each of the
planets.

In addition to Cornbelly's, the Space Farm 7 includes: Belvedere Plantation,
Fredericksburg, Va.; The Rock Ranch, The Rock, Ga.; Dell'Osso Family Farm, Lathrop,
Calif.; Dewberry Farm, Brookshire, Texas; Liberty Ridge Farm, Schaghticoke, N.Y.; and
Vala's Pumpkin Patch, Gretna, Neb.

For more information on Space Farm 7, visit: http://www.spacefarm7.com/

For more information on the Mars rovers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . More information on JPL is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars
Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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NASA to Host News Conference on Asteroid Search Findings

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

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

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

Advisory: 2011-301a Sept. 26, 2011

NASA to Host News Conference on Asteroid Search Findings

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-301a&cid=release_2011-301a

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) on Thurs., Sept.
29, to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take
place at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured
millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will
discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that
hunted for asteroids.

The panelists are:
--Lindley Johnson, Near-Earth Object program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
--Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
--Tim Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
--Lucy McFadden, scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. For NASA TV streaming
video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv . It will also will be
streamed live, with a moderated chat available, at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

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

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Aquarius Yields NASA's First Global Map of Ocean Salinity

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
Headquarters, Washington
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-300 Sept. 22, 2011

Aquarius Yields NASA's First Global Map of Ocean Salinity

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-300&cid=release_2011-300

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's new Aquarius instrument has produced its first global map of the
salinity of the ocean surface, providing an early glimpse of the mission's anticipated discoveries.

Aquarius, which is aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas) observatory, is
making NASA's first space observations of ocean surface salinity variations -- a key component of
Earth's climate. Salinity changes are linked to the cycling of freshwater around the planet and
influence ocean circulation.

"Aquarius' salinity data are showing much higher quality than we expected to see this early in the
mission," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef of Earth & Space Research in Seattle.
"Aquarius soon will allow scientists to explore the connections between global rainfall, ocean
currents and climate variations."

The new map, which shows a tapestry of salinity patterns, demonstrates Aquarius' ability to detect
large-scale salinity distribution features clearly and with sharp contrast. The map is a composite of
the data since Aquarius became operational on Aug. 25. The mission was launched June 10 from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Aquarius/SAC-D is a collaboration between NASA and
Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE).

"Aquarius/SAC-D already is advancing our understanding of ocean surface salinity and Earth's water
cycle," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at agency headquarters in
Washington. "Aquarius is making continuous, consistent, global measurements of ocean salinity,
including measurements from places we have never sampled before."

To produce the map, Aquarius scientists compared the early data with ocean surface salinity
reference data. Although the early data contain some uncertainties, and months of additional
calibration and validation work remain, scientists are impressed by the data's quality.

"Aquarius has exposed a pattern of ocean surface salinity that is rich in variability across a wide
range of scales," said Aquarius science team member Arnold Gordon, professor of oceanography at
Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., and at the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
"This is a great moment in the history of oceanography. The first image raises many questions that
oceanographers will be challenged to explain."

The map shows several well-known ocean salinity features such as higher salinity in the subtropics;
higher average salinity in the Atlantic Ocean compared to the Pacific and Indian oceans; and lower
salinity in rainy belts near the equator, in the northernmost Pacific Ocean and elsewhere. These
features are related to large-scale patterns of rainfall and evaporation over the ocean, river outflow
and ocean circulation. Aquarius will monitor how these features change and study their link to
climate and weather variations.

Other important regional features are evident, including a sharp contrast between the arid, high-
salinity Arabian Sea west of the Indian subcontinent, and the low-salinity Bay of Bengal to the east,
which is dominated by the Ganges River and south Asia monsoon rains. The data also show
important smaller details, such as a larger-than-expected extent of low-salinity water associated with
outflow from the Amazon River.

Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for NASA's Earth Systems Science Pathfinder Program. JPL is
managing Aquarius through its commissioning phase and will archive mission data. Goddard will
manage Aquarius mission operations and process science data. CONAE provided the SAC-D
spacecraft and the mission operations center.

The new map is available at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14786 .

For more information about Aquarius/SAC-D, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius and
http://www.conae.gov.ar/eng/principal.html .

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

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Saturn's Moon Enceladus Spreads Its Influence

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: 2011-299 Sept. 21, 2011

Rosemary Sullivant 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Rosemary.sullivant@jpl.nasa.gov

Saturn's Moon Enceladus Spreads Its Influence

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-299&cid=release_2011-299

Chalk up one more feat for Saturn's intriguing moon Enceladus. The small, dynamic
moon spews out dramatic plumes of water vapor and ice -- first seen by NASA's Cassini
spacecraft in 2005. It possesses simple organic particles and may house liquid water
beneath its surface. Its geyser-like jets create a gigantic halo of ice, dust and gas around
Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring. Now, thanks again to those icy jets, Enceladus
is the only moon in our solar system known to influence substantially the chemical
composition of its parent planet.

In June, the European Space Agency announced that its Herschel Space Observatory,
which has important NASA contributions, had found a huge donut-shaped cloud, or
torus, of water vapor created by Enceladus encircling Saturn. The torus is more than
373,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) across and about 37,000 miles (60,000 kilometers)
thick. It appears to be the source of water in Saturn's upper atmosphere.

Though it is enormous, the cloud had not been seen before because water vapor is
transparent at most visible wavelengths of light. But Herschel could see the cloud with its
infrared detectors. "Herschel is providing dramatic new information about everything
from planets in our own solar system to galaxies billions of light-years away," said Paul
Goldsmith, the NASA Herschel project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.

The discovery of the torus around Saturn did not come as a complete surprise. NASA's
Voyager and Hubble missions had given scientists hints of the existence of water-bearing
clouds around Saturn. Then in 1997, the European Space Agency's Infrared Space
Observatory confirmed the presence of water in Saturn's upper atmosphere. NASA's
Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite also observed water emission from Saturn at
far-infrared wavelengths in 1999.

While a small amount of gaseous water is locked in the warm, lower layers of Saturn's
atmosphere, it can't rise to the colder, higher levels. To get to the upper atmosphere,
water molecules must be entering Saturn's atmosphere from somewhere in space. But
from where and how? Those were mysteries until now.

Build the model and the data will come.

The answer came by combining Herschel's observations of the giant cloud of water vapor
created by Enceladus' plumes with computer models that researchers had already been
developing to describe the behavior of water molecules in clouds around Saturn.

One of these researchers is Tim Cassidy, a recent post-doctoral researcher at JPL who is
now at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics,
Boulder. "What's amazing is that the model," said Cassidy, "which is one iteration in a
long line of cloud models, was built without knowledge of the observation. Those of us in
this small modeling community were using data from Cassini, Voyager and the Hubble
telescope, along with established physics. We weren't expecting such detailed 'images'
of the torus, and the match between model and data was a wonderful surprise."

The results show that, though most of the water in the torus is lost to space, some of the
water molecules fall and freeze on Saturn's rings, while a small amount -- about 3 to 5
percent -- gets through the rings to Saturn's atmosphere. This is just enough to account
for the water that has been observed there.

Herschel's measurements combined with the cloud models also provided new
information about the rate at which water vapor is erupting out of the dark fractures,
known as "tiger stripes," on Enceladus' southern polar region. Previous measurements by
the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft
showed that every second the moon is ejecting about 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of
water vapor.

"With the Herschel measurements of the torus from 2009 and 2010 and our cloud model,
we were able to calculate a source rate for water vapor coming from Enceladus," said
Cassidy. "It agrees very closely with the UVIS finding, which used a completely different
method."

"We can see the water leaving Enceladus and we can detect the end product -- atomic
oxygen -- in the Saturn system," said Cassini UVIS science team member Candy Hansen,
of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz. "It's very nice with Herschel to track
where it goes in the meantime."

While a small fraction of the water molecules inside the torus end up in Saturn's
atmosphere, most are broken down into separate atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
"When water hangs out in the torus, it is subject to the processes that dissociate water
molecules," said Hansen, "first to hydrogen and hydroxide, and then the hydroxide
dissociates into hydrogen and atomic oxygen." This oxygen is dispersed through the
Saturn system. "Cassini discovered atomic oxygen on its approach to Saturn, before it
went into orbit insertion. At the time, no one knew where it was coming from. Now we
do."

"The profound effect this little moon Enceladus has on Saturn and its environment is
astonishing," said Hansen.

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.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments
provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA.
NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL. JPL contributed mission-enabling
technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science
Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech, supports the
United States astronomical community.

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NASA's WISE Mission Captures Black Hole's Wildly Flaring Jet

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

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

Trent Perrotto 202-358-0321
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-298 Sept. 20, 2011

NASA's WISE Mission Captures Black Hole's Wildly Flaring Jet

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-298&cid=release_2011-298

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
have captured rare data of a flaring black hole, revealing new details about these powerful
objects and their blazing jets.

Scientists study jets to learn more about the extreme environments around black holes. Much has
been learned about the material feeding black holes, called accretion disks, and the jets
themselves, through studies using X-rays, gamma rays and radio waves. But key measurements
of the brightest part of the jets, located at their bases, have been difficult despite decades of
work. WISE is offering a new window into this missing link through its infrared observations.

"Imagine what it would be like if our sun were to undergo sudden, random bursts, becoming
three times brighter in a matter of hours and then fading back again. That's the kind of fury we
observed in this jet," said Poshak Gandhi, a scientist with the Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency (JAXA). He is the lead author of a new study on the results appearing in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters. "With WISE's infrared vision, we were able to zoom in on the
inner regions near the base of the stellar-mass black hole's jet for the first time and the physics of
jets in action."

The black hole, called GX 339-4, had been observed previously. It lies more than 20,000 light-
years away from Earth near the center of our galaxy. It has a mass at least six times greater than
the sun. Like other black holes, it is an ultra-dense collection of matter, with gravity that is so
great even light cannot escape. In this case, the black hole is orbited by a companion star that
feeds it. Most of the material from the companion star is pulled into the black hole, but some of it
is blasted away as a jet flowing at nearly the speed of light.

"To see bright flaring activity from a black hole, you need to be looking at the right place at the
right time," said Peter Eisenhardt, the project scientist for WISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "WISE snapped sensitive infrared pictures every 11 seconds for a
year, covering the whole sky, allowing it to catch this rare event."

Observing the jet's variability was possible because of images taken of the same patch of sky
over time, a feature of NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission. WISE data
enabled the team to zoom in on the very compact region around the base of the jet streaming
from the black hole. The size of the region is equivalent to the width of a dime seen at the
distance of our sun.

The results surprised the team, showing huge and erratic fluctuations in the jet activity on
timescales ranging from 11 seconds to a few hours. The observations are like a dance of infrared
colors and show that the size of the jet's base varies. Its radius is approximately 15,000 miles
(24,140 kilometers), with dramatic changes by as large as a factor of 10 or more.

"If you think of the black hole's jet as a firehose, then it's as if we've discovered the flow is
intermittent and the hose itself is varying wildly in size," Poshak said.

The new data also allowed astronomers to make the best measurements yet of the black hole's
magnetic field, which is 30,000 times more powerful than the one generated by Earth at its
surface. Such a strong field is required for accelerating and channeling the flow of matter into a
narrow jet. The WISE data are bringing astronomers closer than ever to understanding how this
exotic phenomenon works.

A video showing variations of the black hole jet, as seen via WISE observations, is online at
http://www.astro.isas.jaxa.jp/~pgandhi/wise_gx339/wise_blackhole_anim.html .

Poshak Gandhi is supported by the JAXA International Top Young Fellowship program. Other
authors of the paper include: A.W. Blain of the University of Leicester, United Kingdom; D.M.
Russell and S. Markoff of the University of Amsterdam; P. Casella of the University of
Southampton, United Kingdom; J. Malzac of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and
Université de Toulouse, France; S. Corbel of Université Paris Diderot and Commissariat à
l'énergie atomique Saclay, France; P. D'Avanzo of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Italy; F.W.
Lewis of Faulkes Telescope Project, Wales; M. Cadolle Bel of the European Space Astronomy
Centre, Spain; P. Goldoni of Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie, France and
Commissariat à l'énergie atomique Saclay, France; S. Wachter of the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, Calif.; D. Khangulyan of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; and
A. Mainzer of JPL.

JPL manages and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
spacecraft was put into hibernation mode after it scanned the sky twice, completing its main
objectives. The mission was selected under NASA's Explorers Program, which is managed by
the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by
the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah; and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace
and Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at
the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. 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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Journey to the Asteroid Belt with NASA Dawn Mission's Chief Engineer

Public Talks Sept. 20, 2011

Journey to the Asteroid Belt with NASA Dawn Mission's Chief Engineer

Is it an asteroid or a small planet? Dr. Marc Rayman from NASA's Dawn mission exploring the giant asteroid Vesta will answer that question and more during two upcoming speaking engagements.

To Boldly Go ... Well, You Know: NASA's Dawn Mission to the Asteroid Belt

When: October 3, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Rancho California Water District Bldg., 42125 Winchester Road, Temecula, CA
Sponsored by: Temecula Valley Astronomers Club
Note: Seating is limited

When: October 20, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Donald E. Bianchi Planetarium at California State University, Northridge (Parking available on Zelzah Avenue)
Directions: http://www.csun.edu/aboutCSUN/directions.html
Sponsored by: CSUN Physics and Astronomy Department
Learn more at: http://www.csun.edu/phys/department_guide/colloquia_and_planetarium/planetarium.html

Overview: Join Dr. Marc Rayman, the chief engineer for NASA's Dawn mission, which is exploring the giant asteroid Vesta, for a public talk about Dawn, its use of ion propulsion and its two exotic asteroid belt destinations. And share in the excitement of controlling a spacecraft on a revolutionary journey through space.

The ambitious and exciting Dawn mission is one of NASA's most remarkable ventures into the solar system. Dawn arrived at its first target, the giant asteroid Vesta, in July and has already sent back stunning imagery and fascinating data. And in just a year, it'll begin its journey to a second body in the asteroid belt called Ceres, which is so large that it's included in the category of dwarf planets, along with Pluto. Both are the most massive residents of the asteroid belt and among the last uncharted worlds in the inner solar system.

Dawn, the only spacecraft ever to orbit an object in the asteroid belt and the first ever designed to orbit two solar system bodies, will study these alien landscapes to uncover clues about the evolution and history of the solar system. Such a mission would be impossible without the use of ion propulsion, a technology that has mostly existed in the domain of science fiction, but which was tested extensively on NASA's Deep Space 1 mission, paving the way for Dawn.

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NASA's WISE Raises Doubt About Asteroid Family Believed Responsible for Dinosaur Extinction

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

Trent Perrotto 202-358-0321
Headquarters, Washington
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-296 Sept. 19, 2011

NASA's WISE Raises Doubt About Asteroid Family Believed Responsible for Dinosaur Extinction

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-296&cid=release_2011-296

PASADENA, Calif. -- Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the
dinosaurs is not likely the culprit, keeping open the case on one of Earth's greatest mysteries.

While scientists are confident a large asteroid crashed into Earth approximately 65 million years
ago, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs and some other life forms on our planet, they do not know
exactly where the asteroid came from or how it made its way to Earth. A 2007 study using visible-
light data from ground-based telescopes first suggested the remnant of a huge asteroid, known as
Baptistina, as a possible suspect.

According to that theory, Baptistina crashed into another asteroid in the main belt between Mars and
Jupiter about 160 million years ago. The collision sent shattered pieces as big as mountains flying.
One of those pieces was believed to have impacted Earth, causing the dinosaurs' extinction.

Since this scenario was first proposed, evidence developed that the so-called Baptistina family of
asteroids was not the responsible party. With the new infrared observations from WISE, astronomers
say Baptistina may finally be ruled out.

"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the
cold case files," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object (NEO)
Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The original calculations with visible
light estimated the size and reflectivity of the Baptistina family members, leading to estimates of
their age, but we now know those estimates were off. With infrared light, WISE was able to get a
more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question."

WISE surveyed the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011.
The asteroid-hunting portion of the mission, called NEOWISE, used the data to catalogue more than
157,000 asteroids in the main belt and discovered more than 33,000 new ones.

Visible light reflects off an asteroid. Without knowing how reflective the surface of the asteroid is,
it's hard to accurately establish size. Infrared observations allow a more accurate size estimate. They
detect infrared light coming from the asteroid itself, which is related to the body's temperature and
size. Once the size is known, the object's reflectivity can be re-calculated by combining infrared with
visible-light data.

The NEOWISE team measured the reflectivity and the size of about 120,000 asteroids in the main
belt, including 1,056 members of the Baptistina family. The scientists calculated the original parent
Baptistina asteroid actually broke up closer to 80 million years ago, half as long as originally
proposed.

This calculation was possible because the size and reflectivity of the asteroid family members
indicate how much time would have been required to reach their current locations -- larger asteroids
would not disperse in their orbits as fast as smaller ones. The results revealed a chunk of the original
Baptistina asteroid needed to hit Earth in less time than previously believed, in just about 15 million
years, to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.

"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot,
and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago," said Amy Mainzer, a study co-author and the
principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Calif.
"This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years." Resonances are areas in
the main belt where gravity nudges from Jupiter and Saturn can act like a pinball machine to fling
asteroids out of the main belt and into the region near Earth.

The asteroid family that produced the dinosaur-killing asteroid remains at large. Evidence that a 10-
kilometer (about 6.2-mile) asteroid impacted Earth 65 million years ago includes a huge, crater-
shaped structure in the Gulf of Mexico and rare minerals in the fossil record, which are common in
meteorites but seldom found in Earth's crust. In addition to the Baptistina results, the NEOWISE
study shows various main belt asteroid families have similar reflective properties. The team hopes to
use NEOWISE data to disentangle families that overlap and trace their histories.

"We are working on creating an asteroid family tree of sorts," said Joseph Masiero, the lead author
of the study. "We are starting to refine our picture of how the asteroids in the main belt smashed
together and mixed up."

JPL manages and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put
into hibernation mode after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. The
principal investigator, astronomer Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was selected
competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in
Logan. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science
operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

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

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NASA's Dawn Collects a Bounty of Beauty from Vesta

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

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

Video Advisory: 2011-293 Sept. 16, 2011

NASA's Dawn Collects a Bounty of Beauty from Vesta

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-293&cid=release_2011-293

PASADENA, Calif. – A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.

The data obtained by Dawn's framing camera, used to produce the visualizations, will help scientists determine the processes that formed Vesta's striking features. It will also help Dawn mission fans all over the world visualize this mysterious world, which is the second most massive object in the main asteroid belt.

The video, which shows Vesta as seen from Dawn's perspective, can be viewed at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1020 .

You'll notice in the video that Vesta is not entirely lit up. There is no light in the high northern latitudes because, like Earth, Vesta has seasons. Currently it is northern winter on Vesta, and the northern polar region is in perpetual darkness. When we view Vesta's rotation from above the south pole, half is in darkness simply because half of Vesta is in daylight and half is in the darkness of night .

Another distinct feature seen in the video is a massive circular structure in the south pole region. Scientists were particularly eager to see this area close-up, since NASA's Hubble Space Telescope first detected it years ago. The circular structure, or depression, is several hundreds of miles, or kilometers, wide, with cliffs that are also several miles high. One impressive mountain in the center of the depression rises approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the base of this depression, making it one of the highest elevations on all known bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system.

The collection of images, obtained when Dawn was about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) above Vesta's surface, was used to determine its rotational axis and a system of latitude and longitude coordinates. One of the first tasks tackled by the Dawn science team was to determine the precise orientation of Vesta's rotation axis relative to the celestial sphere.

The zero-longitude, or prime meridian, of Vesta was defined by the science team using a tiny crater about 1,640 feet (500 meters) in diameter, which they named "Claudia," after a Roman woman during the second century B.C. Dawn's craters will be named after the vestal virgins—the priestesses of the goddess Vesta, and famous Roman women, while other features will be named for festivals and towns of that era.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA 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.

For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

You can also follow the mission on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn .

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Upcoming Educator Workshops

Upcoming Educator Workshops Sept. 15, 2011

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

NASA Lunar and Meteorite Sample Certification Program

Date: Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011

Target audience: K-12 educators

Location:NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif.

Overview:NASA makes actual lunar samples from the historic Apollo missions available to lend to teachers. Attend this certification workshop to bring the excitement of real lunar rocks and regolith samples to your students. This workshop is being offered at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center located in Pomona, Calif. Please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot.

For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115

Robotics

Date: Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011

Target audience: K-12 educators

Location:NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif.

Overview:Did you know that at JPL we talk to Mars robots every day? Discover how engineers use animals to design robots. Come see the exciting extent that we use robotics today and look into the future for space and medicine. Make and take inexpensive classroom activities and bring technology into your classroom! This workshop is being offered at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center located in Pomona, please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot.

For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115

Go For Flight!

Date: Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011

Target audience: K-12 educators

Location:NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif.

Overview:Math and science come alive as you construct aircraft models (kite, helicopter and glider), and launch rockets! Use questioning strategies and redesign to make these activities educationally challenging! This workshop is being offered at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center located in Pomona, please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot.

For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115

Toys In Space ll

Date:Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012

Target audience: K-12 educators

Location:NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif.

Overview:View the educational video "Toys in Space II," which was taped during the flight of STS-54. The video shows astronauts on the space shuttle and students back on Earth co-investigating the behavior of toys in space. Video program segments show the toys' behavior in 1G (Earth's gravity) and then their behavior in the microgravity environment of space! This workshop is being offered at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center located in Pomona, please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot.

For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115

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NASA's Kepler Discovery Confirms First Planet Orbiting Two Stars

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

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

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-292 Sept. 15, 2011

NASA's Kepler Discovery Confirms First Planet Orbiting Two Stars

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-292&cid=release_2011-292

PASADENA, Calif. – The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film
Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA's Kepler mission has made the
first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet -- a planet orbiting two stars -- 200 light-
years from Earth.

Unlike Star Wars' Tatooine, the planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its
discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the
existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a
planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims
from the planet crossing in front of it.

"This discovery confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life," Kepler
Principal Investigator William Borucki, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field,
Calif., said. "Given that most stars in our galaxy are part of a binary system, this means the
opportunities for life are much broader than if planets form only around single stars. This
milestone discovery confirms a theory that scientists have had for decades but could not prove
until now."

A research team led by Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., used data
from the Kepler space telescope, which measures dips in the brightness of more than 150,000
stars, to search for transiting planets. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-
size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water
can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet.

Scientists detected the new planet in the Kepler-16 system, a pair of orbiting stars that eclipse
each other from our vantage point on Earth. When the smaller star partially blocks the larger star,
a primary eclipse occurs, and a secondary eclipse occurs when the smaller star is occulted, or
completely blocked, by the larger star.

Astronomers further observed that the brightness of the system dipped even when the stars were
not eclipsing one another, hinting at a third body. The additional dimming in brightness events,
called the tertiary and quaternary eclipses, reappeared at irregular intervals of time, indicating the
stars were in different positions in their orbit each time the third body passed. This showed the
third body was circling, not just one, but both stars, in a wide circumbinary orbit.

The gravitational tug on the stars, measured by changes in their eclipse times, was a good
indicator of the mass of the third body. Only a very slight gravitational pull was detected, one
that only could be caused by a small mass. The findings are described in a new study published
Friday, Sept. 16, in the journal Science.

"Most of what we know about the sizes of stars comes from such eclipsing binary systems, and
most of what we know about the size of planets comes from transits," said Doyle, who also is the
lead author and a Kepler participating scientist. "Kepler-16 combines the best of both worlds,
with stellar eclipses and planetary transits in one system."

This discovery confirms that Kepler-16b is an inhospitable, cold world about the size of Saturn
and thought to be made up of about half rock and half gas. The parent stars are smaller than our
sun. One is 69 percent the mass of the sun and the other only 20 percent. Kepler-16b orbits
around both stars every 229 days, similar to Venus' 225-day orbit, but lies outside the system's
habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface, because the stars are cooler than
our sun.

"Working in film, we often are tasked with creating something never before seen," said visual
effects supervisor John Knoll of Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., in San
Francisco. "However, more often than not, scientific discoveries prove to be more spectacular
than anything we dare imagine. There is no doubt these discoveries influence and inspire
storytellers. Their very existence serves as cause to dream bigger and open our minds to new
possibilities beyond what we think we 'know.'"

For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

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NASA Mars Research Helps Find Buried Water on Earth

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

News release: 2011-290 Sept. 14, 2011

NASA Mars Research Helps Find Buried Water on Earth

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-290&cid=release_2011-290

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-led team has used radar sounding technology developed to explore
the subsurface of Mars to create high-resolution maps of freshwater aquifers buried deep beneath an
Earth desert, in the first use of airborne sounding radar for aquifer mapping.

The research may help scientists better locate and map Earth's desert aquifers, understand current and
past hydrological conditions in Earth's deserts and assess how climate change is impacting them.
Deserts cover roughly 20 percent of Earth's land surface, including highly populated regions in the
Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, west and central Asia and the southwestern United States.

An international team led by research scientist Essam Heggy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., recently traveled to northern Kuwait to map the depth and extent of aquifers in arid
environments using an airborne sounding radar prototype. The 40-megahertz, low-frequency
sounding radar was provided by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; and the Institut
de Physique du Globe de Paris, France. Heggy's team was joined by personnel from the Kuwait
Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), Kuwait City.

For two weeks, the team flew a helicopter equipped with the radar on 12 low-altitude passes (1,000
feet, or 305 meters) over two well-known freshwater aquifers, probing the desert subsurface down to
the water table at depths ranging from 66 to 213 feet (20 to 65 meters). The researchers successfully
demonstrated that the radar could locate subsurface aquifers, probe variations in the depth of the
water table, and identify locations where water flowed into and out of the aquifers.

"This demonstration is a critical first step that will hopefully lead to large-scale mapping of aquifers,
not only improving our ability to quantify groundwater processes, but also helping water managers
drill more accurately," said Muhammad Al-Rashed, director of KISR's Division of Water Resources.
The radar is sensitive to changes in electrical characteristics of subsurface rock, sediments and water-
saturated soils. Water-saturated zones are highly reflective and mirror the low-frequency radar signal.
The returned radar echoes explored the thick mixture of gravel, sand and silt that covers most of
Kuwait's northern desert and lies above its water table.

The team created high-resolution cross sections of the subsurface, showing variations in the fresh
groundwater table in the two aquifers studied. The radar results were validated with ground
measurements performed by KISR.

"This research will help scientists better understand Earth's fossil aquifer systems, the approximate
number, occurrence and distribution of which remain largely unknown," said Heggy. "Much of the
evidence for climate change in Earth's deserts lies beneath the surface and is reflected in its
groundwater. By mapping desert aquifers with this technology, we can detect layers deposited by
ancient geological processes and trace back paleoclimatic conditions that existed thousands of years
ago, when many of today's deserts were wet."

Heggy said most recent observations, scientific interest and data analyses of global warming have
concentrated on Earth's polar regions and forests, which provide direct measurable evidence of large-
scale environmental changes. Arid and semi-arid environments, which represent a substantial portion
of Earth's surface, have remained poorly studied. Yet water scarcity and salt content, changes in
rainfall, flash floods, high rates of aquifer exploitation and growth of desert regions are all signs that
suggest climate change and human activities are also affecting these arid and semi-arid zones.

The radar sounding prototype shares similar characteristics with two instruments flying on Mars-
orbiting spacecraft: Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), on
the European Space Agency's Mars Express, and Shallow Radar (SHARAD), on NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter. MARSIS, jointly developed by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, probes
the Martian subsurface sediments and polar ice caps to a maximum depth of about 1.9 miles (3
kilometers). SHARAD, also built by the Italian Space Agency, looks for liquid or frozen water in the
first few hundred feet of Mars' crust and probes Mars' polar caps. Both instruments have found
evidence of ice in the Martian subsurface, but have not yet detected liquid water. The Kuwait results
may lead to revised interpretations of data from these two instruments.

The research follows earlier work by JPL scientists to probe the subsurface of the Sahara desert using
higher-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar instruments flown onboard three space shuttle missions in
1981, 1984 and 1994. That work located shallow drainage networks and large dry basins, suggesting
the Sahara has had extensive surface water activity in its recent geological past.

Kuwait's well-mapped shallow aquifers and flat surface provided the team with an ideal test location.
Extreme dryness, such as that present in this region of Kuwait, is necessary to allow the radar's
waves to penetrate deep into the surface and reflect on water-saturated layers beneath. Kuwait's flat
topography and low radio noise also reduced clutter and improved the radar signal's return.

"Results of this study pave the way for potential airborne mapping of aquifers in hyper-arid regions
such as the Sahara and Arabian Peninsula, and can be applied to design concepts for a possible future
satellite mission to map Earth's desert aquifers," said Craig Dobson, program officer for Geodetic
Imaging and Airborne Instrument Technology Transition programs at NASA Headquarters,
Washington. The work is a pathfinder for the Orbiting Arid Subsurface and Ice Sheet Sounder
(OASIS), a NASA spacecraft mission concept designed to map shallow aquifers in Earth's most arid
desert regions and measure ice sheet volume, thickness, basal topography and discharge rates.

The study was co-funded by the California Institute of Technology's Keck Institute for Space Studies
and KISR. The Kuwaiti Police Air Force provided technical support for the flight tests.

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

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Memorial Image Taken on Mars on September 11, 2011

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

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

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

Image advisory: 2011-286 Sept. 12, 2011

Memorial Image Taken on Mars on September 11, 2011

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-286&cid=release_2011-286

PASADENA, Calif. -- A view of a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the
World Trade Center towers was taken on Mars yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The memorial, made from aluminum recovered from the site of the twin towers in weeks
following the attacks, serves as a cable guard on a tool on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover
Opportunity and bears an image of the American flag.

The view combining exposures from two cameras on the rover is online at:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14750 .

The memorial is on the rover's rock abrasion tool, which was being made in September 2001 by
workers at Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan, less than a mile from the World Trade
Center.

Opportunity's panoramic camera and navigation camera photographed the tool on Sept. 11, 2011,
during the 2,713th Martian day of the rover's work on Mars. Opportunity completed its three-
month prime mission on Mars in April 2004 and has worked for more than seven years since
then in bonus extended missions.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. Additional information about Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, is
online at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

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NASA Launches Mission to Study Moon From Crust to Core

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

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

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

Caroline McCall 617-253-1682
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
cmcall5@mit.edu

News release: 2011-285 Sept. 10, 2011

NASA Launches Mission to Study Moon From Crust to Core

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-285&cid=release_2011-285

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory
(GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:08 a.m.
EDT (6:08 a.m. PDT) Saturday, Sept. 10, to study the moon in unprecedented detail.

GRAIL-A is scheduled to reach the moon on New Year's Eve 2011, while GRAIL-B will arrive
New Year's Day 2012. The two solar-powered spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the
moon to measure its gravity field. GRAIL will answer longstanding questions about the moon
and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar
system formed.

"If there was ever any doubt that Florida's Space Coast would continue to be open for business,
that thought was drowned out by the roar of today's GRAIL launch," said NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden. "GRAIL and many other exciting upcoming missions make clear that NASA is
taking its next big leap into deep space exploration, and the space industry continues to provide
the jobs and workers needed to support this critical effort."

The spacecraft were launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. GRAIL mission
controllers acquired a signal from GRAIL-A at 10:29 a.m. EDT (7:29 a.m. PDT). GRAIL-B's
signal was received eight minutes later. The telemetry downlinked from both spacecraft indicates
they have deployed their solar panels and are operating as expected.

"Our GRAIL twins have Earth in their rearview mirrors and the moon in their sights," said David
Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The
mission team is ready to test, analyze and fine-tune our spacecraft over the next three-and-a-half
months on our journey to lunar orbit."

The straight-line distance from Earth to the moon is approximately 250,000 miles (402,336
kilometers). NASA's Apollo moon crews needed approximately three days to cover that distance.
However, each spacecraft will take approximately 3.5 months and cover more than 2.5 million
miles (4 million kilometers) to arrive. This low-energy trajectory results in the longer travel time.
The size of the launch vehicle allows more time for spacecraft check-out and time to update
plans for lunar operations. The science collection phase for GRAIL is expected to last 82 days.

"Since the earliest humans looked skyward, they have been fascinated by the moon," said
GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge. "GRAIL will take lunar exploration to a new level, providing an unprecedented
characterization of the moon's interior that will advance understanding of how the moon formed
and evolved."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the GRAIL
mission. It is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. Launch
management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida

For more information about GRAIL, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail and http://grail.nasa.gov .

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Tributes to Terrorism Victims are on Mars

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Feature: 2011-281 Sept. 8, 2011

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

Tributes to Terrorism Victims are on Mars

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-281&cid=release_2011-281

In September 2001, Honeybee Robotics employees in lower Manhattan were building a
pair of tools for grinding weathered rinds off rocks on Mars, so that scientific instruments
on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity could inspect the rocks'
interiors.

That month's attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, less than a mile
away, shook the lives of the employees and millions of others.

Work on the rock abrasion tools needed to meet a tight schedule to allow thorough
testing before launch dates governed by the motions of the planets. The people building
the tools could not spend much time helping at shelters or in other ways to cope with
the life-changing tragedy of Sept. 11. However, they did find a special way to pay tribute
to the thousands of victims who perished in the attack.

An aluminum cuff serving as a cable shield on each of the rock abrasion tools on Mars
was made from aluminum recovered from the destroyed World Trade Center towers.
The metal bears the image of an American flag and fills a renewed purpose as part of
solar system exploration.

Honeybee Robotics collaborated with the New York mayor's office; a metal-working
shop in Round Rock, Texas; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; and
the rover missions' science leader, Steve Squyres, at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

"It's gratifying knowing that a piece of the World Trade Center is up there on Mars. That
shield on Mars, to me, contrasts the destructive nature of the attackers with the
ingenuity and hopeful attitude of Americans," said Stephen Gorevan, Honeybee founder
and chairman, and a member of the Mars rover science team.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2011, Gorevan was six blocks from the World Trade
Center, riding his bicycle to work, when he heard an airliner hit the first tower. "Mostly,
what comes back to me even today is the sound of the engines before the first plane
struck the tower. Just before crashing into the tower, I could hear the engines being
revved up as if those behind the controls wanted to ensure the maximum destruction. I
stopped and stared for a few minutes and realized I felt totally helpless, and I left the
scene and went to my office nearby, where my colleagues told me a second plane had
struck. We watched the rest of the sad events of that day from the roof of our facility."

At Honeybee's building on Elizabeth Street, as in the rest of the area, normal activities
were put on hold for days, and the smell from the collapse of the towers persisted for
weeks.

Steve Kondos, who was at the time a JPL engineer working closely with the Honeybee
team, came up with the suggestion for including something on the rovers as an
interplanetary memorial. JPL was building the rovers and managing the project.

To carry out the idea, an early hurdle was acquiring an appropriate piece of material
from the World Trade Center site. Through Gorevan's contacts, a parcel was delivered
to Honeybee Robotics from the mayor's office on Dec. 1, 2001, with a twisted plate of
aluminum inside and a note: "Here is debris from Tower 1 and Tower 2."

Tom Myrick, an engineer at Honeybee, saw the possibility of machining the aluminum
into the cable shields for the rock abrasion tools. He hand-delivered the material to the
machine shop in Texas that was working on other components of the tools. When the
shields were back in New York, he affixed an image of the American flag on each.

The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, Fla., on June 10, 2003. Opportunity's launch followed on July 7. Both rovers
landed the following January and completed their three-month prime missions in April
2004. Nobody on the rover team or at Honeybee spoke publicly about the source of the
aluminum on the cable shields until later that year.

"It was meant to be a quiet tribute," Gorevan told a New York Times reporter writing a
November 2004 story about Manhattan's participation in the rover missions. "Enough
time has passed. We want the families to know."

Since landing on the Red Planet, both rovers have made important discoveries about
wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting
microbial life. Spirit ended communications in March 2010. Opportunity is still active,
and researchers plan to use its rock abrasion tool on selected targets around a large
crater that the rover reached last month.

One day, both rovers will be silent. In the cold, dry environments where they have
worked on Mars, the onboard memorials to victims of the Sept. 11 attack could remain
in good condition for millions of years.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of
Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for NASA.

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