Top Stories: November 2012

Friday, November 30, 2012

NASA to Host Dec. 3 Teleconference About Voyager Mission

Thursday, November 29, 2012

NASA Spacecraft Finds New Evidence for Water Ice on Mercury

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
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
818-393-9011

News feature: 2012-378 Nov. 29, 2012

NASA Spacecraft Finds New Evidence for Water Ice on Mercury

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-378&cid=release_2012-378

PASADENA, Calif. -- Instruments aboard NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft studying the planet Mercury have provided compelling support for the long-held hypothesis the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials within its permanently shadowed polar craters.

"About the last thing you would expect on a planet so close to the sun is water ice," said Matthew Siegler, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and an author on one of three papers published today in Science Express. "But due to Mercury's low tilt, craters near the poles can remain in year-round shadow and be ridiculously cold."

Scientists suggested decades ago there might be water ice and other frozen volatiles trapped at Mercury's poles. The idea received a boost in 1991 when the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected radar-bright patches at Mercury's poles. Many of these patches corresponded to the locations of large impact craters mapped by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft in the 1970s. However, because Mariner saw less than 50 percent of the planet, planetary scientists lacked a complete diagram of the poles to compare with the radar images.

Images taken from MESSENGER in 2011, and earlier this year, confirmed all radar-bright features at Mercury's north and south poles lie within shadowed regions on the planet's surface. These findings are consistent with the water ice hypothesis.

"The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick," said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., lead author of one of the three papers describing the findings.

The new observations from MESSENGER support the idea that ice is the major constituent of Mercury's north polar deposits. These measurements also reveal ice is exposed at the surface in the coldest of those deposits, but buried beneath unusually dark material across most of the deposits. In the areas where ice is buried, temperatures at the surface are slightly too warm for ice to be stable.

"Everywhere on Mercury we predict it's cold enough that there could be ice, Messenger finds bright deposits," said Siegler. "Where it is slightly warmer, and where ice should only be stable underground, we find a dark material, darker than anything else we've seen on Mercury."

The dark material is likely a mix of complex organic compounds delivered to Mercury by the impacts of comets and volatile-rich asteroids, the same objects that likely delivered water to the innermost planet.

A composite image of the discovery is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/PressConf20121126_2.html

MESSENGER was designed and built by the Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. The lab manages and operates the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed for the directorate by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

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Project Helps Educators Bring Remote Sensing to the Classroom

Professional Development Nov. 29, 2012

This is a feature of the NASA/JPL Education Office

Project Helps Educators Bring Remote Sensing to the Classroom

Instructors of geographic information systems have a new opportunity to learn about remote sensing technology through a project funded by The National Science Foundation, Integrated Geospatial Education and Technology Training-¬Remote Sensing, or iGETT-RS.

The project offers 18 months of professional development that will enable participants to integrate remote sensing data and concepts into their teaching in ways that support workforce needs. iGETT-RS builds on the success of the first iGETT project (2007-2012) and participants will join an active community of practice established during that time.

Educators will be divided into two cohorts running from February 2013 through July 2014 and February 2014 through July 2015. Each cohort will participate in two summer institutes and will receive mentoring and guidance throughout the project. Participants will gain foundational knowledge of remote sensing and will learn to identify, download, analyze and integrate federal land remote sensing data (such as Landsat, MODIS, and ASTER) with GIS to solve practical problems. Topical applications include agriculture, biodiversity, climate change, disaster management, environmental science, forestry, urban planning and water management.

Faculty who currently teach GIS at U.S. high schools, two-year colleges and universities are eligible to participate. Priority will be given to applicants from two-year colleges (28 participants) and from high schools (4 participants) and universities (4 participants) who are interested in developing career pipelines that include two-year colleges.

The deadline to apply is Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012.

More information about the project (including housing and stipends) and application are available at http://igett.delmar.edu.

iGETT-RS is a multi-year collaboration by the National Council for Geographic Education, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Land Remote Sensing Program, and the GeoTech Center.

With any questions please contact: Jeannie Allen, Jeannette.E.Allen@nasa.gov, (240) 460-0946.

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Ice Sheet Loss at Both Poles Increasing, Study Finds

Update Set in San Francisco About Curiosity Mars Rover

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

Veronica McGregor/Guy Webster 818-354-9452/ 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
veronica.c.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov/ guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

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

Advisory: 2012-377b Nov. 29, 2012

Update Set in San Francisco About Curiosity Mars Rover

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-377&cid=release_2012-377

PASADENA, Calif. -- The next news conference about the NASA Mars rover Curiosity will be held
at 9 a.m. Monday, Dec. 3, in San Francisco at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union
(AGU).

Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are
incorrect. The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical
instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil. One class of substances Curiosity is checking for is
organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life. At this point in the
mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics.

The Mars Science Laboratory Project and its Curiosity rover are less than four months into a two-year
prime mission to investigate whether conditions in Mars' Gale Crater may have been favorable for
microbial life. Curiosity is exceeding all expectations for a new mission with all of the instruments
and measurement systems performing well. This is spectacular for such a complex system, and one
that is operated so far away on Mars by people here on planet Earth. The mission already has found
an ancient riverbed on the Red Planet, and there is every expectation for remarkable discoveries still
to come.

Audio and visuals from the briefing also will be streamed online at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .

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

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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

NASA's Cassini Sees Abrupt Turn in Titan's Atmosphere

NASA Study Could Improve Hurricane Strength Forecasts

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: 2012-373 Nov. 28, 2012

NASA Study Could Improve Hurricane Strength Forecasts

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-373&cid=release_2012-373

PASADENA, Calif. – Forecasters could soon be better able to predict how intense tropical cyclones like Hurricane Sandy will be by analyzing relative-humidity levels within their large-scale environments, finds a new NASA-led study.

Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., UCLA and the University of Hawaii at Manoa analyzed relative humidity data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft for nearly 200 North Atlantic hurricanes between 2002 and 2010. The AIRS data were then compared with various types of post-storm data collected from all available sources by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center, including measured maximum sustained winds.

The researchers found the hurricanes that rapidly intensified tended to exist within a moister large-scale environment than weaker storms. The rapidly intensifying hurricanes had statistically significant higher relative-humidity levels in their environments than storms whose intensity was weakening or unchanged.

Lead author and former JPL postdoctoral scholar Longtao Wu, now an assistant researcher at the UCLA-JPL Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, said the study could lead to improvements in hurricane intensity forecasts.

"Our results show relative humidity and its variations within a hurricane's large-scale environment may be useful predictors in improving intensity forecast models," Wu said. "This is the first satellite analysis to quantify this small but statistically significant correlation." Results of the study were published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Hurricane forecasters strive to predict where a storm is heading and how strong it will be. Since the early 1990s, they have significantly improved forecasts of hurricane paths in the Atlantic basin, by about two to four percent a year. But forecasts of hurricane intensity have improved much slower -- less than one percent a year in the Atlantic basin since the mid-1980s. In other ocean basins, like the eastern and western North Pacific, improvements in tropical cyclone intensity forecasts are nearly 10 times smaller than those of track forecasts.

Changes in hurricane intensity are sensitive to numerous factors, both within the storms themselves and also in their surrounding environments. Environmental relative humidity is one factor, and it generally decreases the farther you get from a storm's center. Other factors include sea surface temperature, ocean heat content and vertical wind shear.

Wu and his colleagues sorted the AIRS relative humidity data by storm intensity and intensification rates, and classified them based on their distance from storm center and also by what quadrant of the storm they came from relative to the storm's direction of travel (front right, front left, rear right and rear left). Generally, a hurricane's right side relative to its direction of travel is the most dangerous. This is because a hurricane's wind speed is amplified by the speed of its steering winds. Storm surge is also higher on a hurricane's right side.

The team found substantial differences in relative-humidity levels between storm quadrants. One factor may be the shape of the Atlantic basin. Hurricanes in the Atlantic usually travel to the west or northwest -- regions that are drier, climatologically-speaking, than from where the storms originated. This causes the front two quadrants of Atlantic hurricanes to be drier than their rear two quadrants.

A unique result the team found is that in their front-right quadrants, rapidly intensifying hurricanes tended to have sharply higher amounts of upper tropospheric moisture near their centers than they did farther from their centers.

"We speculate that decreasing relative humidity levels farther from a storm's center may be an important factor in a cyclone's rapid intensification," said JPL co-author Hui Su. "A drier environment farther from a storm's center limits the development of its outer rain bands and favors the growth of its inner core. Conversely, a wet environment farther from a storm's center can weaken a cyclone by making it easier for rain bands to form outside the storm's core, which compete with the inner core's growth."

"Most scientists have tended to view hurricane intensification as a process that takes place within a cyclone's inner core and depends more on smaller-scale processes than on a storm's large-scale environment," said JPL co-author Bjorn Lambrigtsen. "This study shows a different path, and the usefulness of incorporating large-scale environmental data collected far away from a storm's center."

Su said NASA is exploring collaborations with NOAA forecasters to incorporate AIRS relative humidity data into NOAA's real-time hurricane prediction system.

For more on AIRS, visit: http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

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Monday, November 26, 2012

Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn

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 C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Elizabeth Zubritsky 301-614-5438
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
elizabeth.a.zubritsky@nasa.gov

News feature: 2012-367 Nov. 26, 2012

Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-367&cid=release_2012-367

You could call this "Pac-Man, the Sequel." Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted a second feature shaped like the 1980s video game icon in the Saturn system, this time on the moon Tethys. (The first was found on Mimas in 2010). The pattern appears in thermal data obtained by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, with warmer areas making up the Pac-Man shape.

"Finding a second Pac-Man in the Saturn system tells us that the processes creating these Pac-Men are more widespread than previously thought," said Carly Howett, the lead author of a paper recently released online in the journal Icarus. "The Saturn system - and even the Jupiter system - could turn out to be a veritable arcade of these characters."

Scientists theorize that the Pac-Man thermal shape on the Saturnian moons occurs because of the way high-energy electrons bombard low latitudes on the side of the moon that faces forward as it orbits around Saturn. The bombardment turns that part of the fluffy surface into hard-packed ice. As a result, the altered surface does not heat as rapidly in the sunshine or cool down as quickly at night as the rest of the surface, similar to how a boardwalk at the beach feels cooler during the day but warmer at night than the nearby sand. Finding another Pac-Man on Tethys confirms that high-energy electrons can dramatically alter the surface of an icy moon. Also, because the altered region on Tethys, unlike on Mimas, is also bombarded by icy particles from Enceladus' plumes, it implies the surface alteration is occurring more quickly than its recoating by plume particles.

"Studies at infrared wavelengths give us a tremendous amount of information about the processes that shape planets and moons," said Mike Flasar, the spectrometer's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "A result like this underscores just how powerful these observations are."

Scientists saw the new Pac-Man on Tethys in data obtained on Sept. 14, 2011, where daytime temperatures inside the mouth of Pac-Man were seen to be cooler than their surroundings by 29 degrees Fahrenheit (15 kelvins). The warmest temperature recorded was a chilly minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (90 kelvins), which is actually slightly cooler than the warmest temperature at Mimas (about minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit, or 95 kelvins). At Tethys, unlike Mimas, the Pac-Man pattern can also be seen subtly in visible-light images of the surface, as a dark lens-shaped region. This brightness variation was first noticed by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1980.

"Finding a new Pac-Man demonstrates the diversity of processes at work in the Saturn system," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Future Cassini observations may reveal other new phenomena that will surprise us and help us better understand the evolution of moons in the Saturn system and beyond."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the instrument was built.

More information about the Cassini-Huygens mission is at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Thursday, November 15, 2012

NASA Observatories Find Most Distant Galaxy Candidate

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

Rob Gutro 301-286-4044
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov

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

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

News release: 2012-360 Nov. 15, 2012

NASA Observatories Find Most Distant Galaxy Candidate

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-360&cid=release_2012-360

PASADENA, Calif. – By combining the power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space, astronomers have set a new record for finding the most distant galaxy seen in the universe.

The farthest galaxy appears as a diminutive blob that is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. But it offers a peek back into a time when the universe was three percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. The newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, was observed 420 million years after the big bang, the theorized beginning of the universe. Its light has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth.

This find is the latest discovery from a program that uses natural zoom lenses to reveal distant galaxies in the early universe. The Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is using massive galaxy clusters as cosmic telescopes to magnify distant galaxies behind them. This effect is called gravitational lensing.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster's magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope. The cluster's gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear about eight, seven, and two times brighter than they otherwise would, enabling astronomers to detect the galaxy more efficiently and with greater confidence.

"This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do," said Postman. "Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy."

MACS0647-JD is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy. An analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

"This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy," said the study's lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments."

The galaxy was observed with 17 filters, spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Coe, a CLASH team member, discovered the galaxy in February while poring over a catalogue of thousands of gravitationally lensed objects found in Hubble observations of 17 clusters in the CLASH survey. But the galaxy appeared only in the two reddest filters.

"So either MACS0647-JD is a very red object, only shining at red wavelengths, or it is extremely distant and its light has been 'redshifted' to these wavelengths, or some combination of the two," Coe said. "We considered this full range of possibilities."

The CLASH team identified multiple images of eight galaxies lensed by the galaxy cluster. Their positions allowed the team to produce a map of the cluster's mass, which is primarily composed of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the bulk of the universe's mass. "It's like a big puzzle," said Coe. "We have to arrange the mass in the cluster so that it deflects the light of each galaxy to the positions observed." The team's analysis revealed that the cluster's mass distribution produced three lensed images of MACS0647-JD at the positions and relative brightness observed in the Hubble image.

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object's identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The paper will appear in the Dec. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Redshift is a consequence of the expansion of space over cosmic time. Astronomers study the distant universe in near-infrared light because the expansion of space stretches ultraviolet and visible light from galaxies into infrared wavelengths. Coe estimates MACS0647-JD has a redshift of 11, the highest yet observed.

Images of the galaxy at longer wavelengths obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope played a key role in the analysis. If the object were intrinsically red, it would appear bright in the Spitzer images. Instead, the galaxy barely was detected, if at all, indicating its great distance. The research team plans to use Spitzer to obtain deeper observations of the galaxy, which should yield confident detections as well as estimates of the object's age and dust content.

MACS0647-JD galaxy, however, may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object's light into thousands of colors. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team's extensive analysis.

"All three of the lensed galaxy images match fairly well and are in positions you would expect for a galaxy at that remote distance when you look at the predictions from our best lens models for this cluster," Coe said.

The new distance champion is the second remote galaxy uncovered in the CLASH survey, a multi-wavelength census of 25 hefty galaxy clusters with Hubble's ACS and WFC3. Earlier this year, the CLASH team announced the discovery of a galaxy that existed when the universe was 490 million years old, 70 million years later than the new record-breaking galaxy. So far, the survey has completed observations for 20 of the 25 clusters.

The team hopes to use Hubble to search for more dwarf galaxies at these early epochs. If these infant galaxies are numerous, then they could have provided the energy to burn off the fog of hydrogen that blanketed the universe, a process called re-ionization. Re-ionization ultimately made the universe transparent to light.

Research scientists Leonidas Moustakas and Julian Merten of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., participated in the study.

For images and more information about the study, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and http://hubblesite.org/news/2012/36 .

JPL 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. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

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NASA Rover Providing New Weather and Radiation Data About Mars

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. PHONE 818-354-5011
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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2012-361 Nov. 15, 2012

NASA Rover Providing New Weather and Radiation Data About Mars

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-361&cid=release_2012-361

PASADENA, Calif. -- Observations of wind patterns and natural radiation patterns on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover are helping scientists better understand the environment on the Red Planet's surface.

Researchers using the car-sized mobile laboratory have identified transient whirlwinds, mapped winds in relation to slopes, tracked daily and seasonal changes in air pressure, and linked rhythmic changes in radiation to daily atmospheric changes. The knowledge being gained about these processes helps scientists interpret evidence about environmental changes on Mars that might have led to conditions favorable for life.

During the first 12 weeks after Curiosity landed in an area named Gale Crater, an international team of researchers analyzed data from more than 20 atmospheric events with at least one characteristic of a whirlwind recorded by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) instrument. Those characteristics can include a brief dip in air pressure, a change in wind direction, a change in wind speed, a rise in air temperature or a dip in ultraviolet light reaching the rover. Two of the events included all five characteristics.

In many regions of Mars, dust-devil tracks and shadows have been seen from orbit, but those visual clues have not been seen in Gale Crater. One possibility is that vortex whirlwinds arise at Gale without lifting as much dust as they do elsewhere.

"Dust in the atmosphere has a major role in shaping the climate on Mars," said Manuel de la Torre Juarez of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He is the investigation scientist for REMS, which Spain provided for the mission. "The dust lifted by dust devils and dust storms warms the atmosphere."

Dominant wind direction identified by REMS has surprised some researchers who expected slope effects to produce north-south winds. The rover is just north of a mountain called Mount Sharp. If air movement up and down the mountain's slope governed wind direction, dominant winds generally would be north-south. However, east-west winds appear to predominate. The rim of Gale Crater may be a factor.

"With the crater rim slope to the north and Mount Sharp to the south, we may be seeing more of the wind blowing along the depression in between the two slopes, rather than up and down the slope of Mount Sharp," said Claire Newman, a REMS investigator at Ashima Research in Pasadena. "If we don't see a change in wind patterns as Curiosity heads up the slope of Mount Sharp -- that would be a surprise."

REMS monitoring of air pressure has tracked both a seasonal increase and a daily rhythm. Neither was unexpected, but the details improve understanding of atmospheric cycles on present-day Mars, which helps with estimating how the cycles may have operated in the past.

The seasonal increase results from tons of carbon dioxide, which had been frozen into a southern winter ice cap, returning into the atmosphere as southern spring turns to summer. The daily cycle of higher pressure in the morning and lower pressure in the evening results from daytime heating of the atmosphere by the sun. As morning works its way westward around the planet, so does a wave of heat-expanded atmosphere, known as a thermal tide.

Effects of that atmospheric tide show up in data from Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD). This instrument monitors high-energy radiation considered to be a health risk to astronauts and a factor in whether microbes could survive on Mars' surface.

"We see a definite pattern related to the daily thermal tides of the atmosphere," said RAD Principal Investigator Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute's Boulder, Colo., branch. "The atmosphere provides a level of shielding, and so charged-particle radiation is less when the atmosphere is thicker. Overall, Mars' atmosphere reduces the radiation dose compared to what we saw during the flight to Mars."

The overall goal of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission is to use 10 instruments on Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, and built Curiosity.

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

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

NASA's Kepler Wraps Prime Mission, Begins Extension

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Michele Johnson 650-604-4789
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

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

News release: 2012-359 Nov. 14, 2012

NASA's Kepler Completes Prime Mission, Begins Extended Mission

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-359&cid=release_2012-359

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope's three-and-a-half-year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years.

Scientists have used Kepler data to identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets. Kepler is teaching us that the galaxy is teeming with planetary systems and that planets are prolific, and is giving us hints that nature makes small planets efficiently.

So far, hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates have been found, as well as candidates that orbit in the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. None of the candidates is exactly like Earth. With the completion of its prime mission, Kepler now has collected enough data to begin finding true sun-Earth analogs -- Earth-size planets with a one-year orbit around stars similar to the sun.

"The initial discoveries of the Kepler mission indicate at least a third of the stars have planets and the number of planets in our galaxy must number in the billions," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "The planets of greatest interest are other Earths, and these could already be in the data awaiting analysis. Kepler's most exciting results are yet to come."

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope searches for planet candidates orbiting distant suns, or exoplanets, by continuously measuring the brightness of more than 150,000 stars. When a planet candidate passes, or transits, in front of the star from the spacecraft's vantage point, light from the star is blocked. Different-sized planets block different amounts of starlight. The amount of starlight blocked by a planet reveals its size relative to its star.

Kepler was launched March 6, 2009. Its mission was to survey a portion of the galaxy to determine what fraction of stars might harbor potentially habitable, Earth-sized planets. Planets orbiting in or near habitable zones are of particular interest.

Kepler began the search for small worlds like our own on May 12, 2009, after two months of commissioning. Within months, five exoplanets, known as hot Jupiters because of their enormous size and orbits close to their stars, were confirmed.

Results from Kepler data continue to expand our understanding of planets and planetary systems. Highlights from the prime mission include:

-- In August 2010, scientists confirmed the discovery of the first planetary system with more than one planet transiting the same star. The Kepler-9 system opened the door to measurement of gravitational interactions between planets as observed by the variations in their transit timing. This powerful new technique enables astronomers, in many cases, to calculate the mass of planets directly from Kepler data, without the need for follow-up observations from the ground.

-- In January 2011, the Kepler team announced the discovery of the first unquestionably rocky planet outside the solar system. Kepler-10b, measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, is the smallest confirmed planet with both a radius and mass measurement. Kepler has continued to uncover smaller and smaller planets, some almost as small as Mars, which tells us small rocky worlds may be common in the galaxy.

-- In February 2011, scientists announced Kepler had found a very crowded and compact planetary system -- a star with multiple transiting planets. Kepler-11 has six planets larger than Earth, all orbiting closer to their star than Venus orbits our sun. This and other subsequently identified compact, multi-planet systems have orbital spacing relative to their host sun and neighboring planets unlike anything envisioned prior to the mission.

-- In September 2011, Kepler data confirmed the existence of a world with a double sunset like the one famously portrayed in the film "Star Wars" more than 35 years ago. The discovery of Kepler-16b turned science fiction into science fact. Since then, the discoveries of six additional worlds orbiting double stars further demonstrated planets can form and persist in the environs of a double-star system.

-- In December 2011, NASA announced Kepler's discovery of the mission's first planet in a habitable zone. Kepler-22b, about 2.4 times the size of Earth, is the smallest-radius planet yet found to orbit a sun-like star in the habitable zone. This discovery confirmed that we are getting continually closer to finding planets like our own.

-- In February 2012, the Kepler team announced more than 1,000 new transiting planet candidates for a cumulative total of 2,321. The data continue the trend toward identifying smaller planets at longer orbital periods, similar to Earth. The results include hundreds of planetary systems.

-- Recently, citizen scientists participating in Planet Hunters, a program led by Yale University, New Haven, Conn., that enlists the public to comb through Kepler data for signs of transiting planets, made their first planet discovery. The joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double star. The three bodies are, in turn, being orbited by a second distant pair of stars.

"Kepler's bounty of new planet discoveries, many quite different from anything found previously, will continue to astound," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at Ames. "But to me, the most wonderful discovery of the mission has not been individual planets, but the systems of two, three, even six planets crowded close to their stars, and, like the planets orbiting about our sun, moving in nearly the same plane. Like people, planets interact with their neighbors and can be greatly affected by them. What are the neighborhoods of Earth-size exoplanets like? This is the question I most hope Kepler will answer in the years to come."

In April 2012, NASA awarded Kepler an extended mission through as late as 2016. More time will enable the continued search for worlds like our own -- worlds that are not too far and too close to their sun.

"The Earth isn't unique, nor the center of the universe," said Geoff Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley. "The diversity of other worlds is greater than depicted in all the science fiction novels and movies. Aristotle would be proud of us for answering some of the most profound philosophical questions about our place in the universe."

Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

For more information about NASA's Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler .

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

NASA Hosts Nov. 15 Telecon About Mars Rover Progress

NASA Rover Finds Clues to Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Earn Your Wings with NASA in Upcoming Educator Workshop

Educator Workshop Nov. 08, 2012

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

Earn Your Wings with NASA!

Date: Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012, 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Target audience: Formal and informal educators for grades 3-8 (all educators are welcome!)

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

Overview: How do planes fly? Is it physics? Math? Magic? Learn about the forces involved in flight and pick up some easy ideas for exciting math and science lessons you can do in your classroom tomorrow. After you understand the basics, we will use the engineering design process to improve aircraft performance and learn how air traffic controllers use algebra every day to keep air travelers safe. Join JPL education specialist Dr. Ota Lutz for this uplifting workshop!

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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Friday, November 2, 2012

NASA Rover Finds Clues to Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

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

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

Nancy Neal Jones 301-286-0039
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov

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

News release: 2012-348 Nov. 2, 2012

NASA Rover Finds Clues to Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-348&cid=release_2012-348

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's car-sized rover, Curiosity, has taken significant steps toward understanding how Mars may have lost much of its original atmosphere.

Learning what happened to the Martian atmosphere will help scientists assess whether the planet ever was habitable. The present atmosphere of Mars is 100 times thinner than Earth's.

A set of instruments aboard the rover has ingested and analyzed samples of the atmosphere collected near the "Rocknest" site in Gale Crater where the rover is stopped for research. Findings from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments suggest that loss of a fraction of the atmosphere, resulting from a physical process favoring retention of heavier isotopes of certain elements, has been a significant factor in the evolution of the planet. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights.

Initial SAM results show an increase of five percent in heavier isotopes of carbon in the atmospheric carbon dioxide compared to estimates of the isotopic ratios present when Mars formed. These enriched ratios of heavier isotopes to lighter ones suggest the top of the atmosphere may have been lost to interplanetary space. Losses at the top of the atmosphere would deplete lighter isotopes. Isotopes of argon also show enrichment of the heavy isotope, matching previous estimates of atmosphere composition derived from studies of Martian meteorites on Earth.

Scientists theorize that in Mars' distant past its environment may have been quite different, with persistent water and a thicker atmosphere. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission will investigate possible losses from the upper atmosphere when it arrives at Mars in 2014.

With these initial sniffs of Martian atmosphere, SAM also made the most sensitive measurements ever to search for methane gas on Mars. Preliminary results reveal little to no methane. Methane is of interest as a simple precursor chemical for life. On Earth, it can be produced by either biological or non-biological processes.

Methane has been difficult to detect from Earth or the current generation of Mars orbiters because the gas exists on Mars only in traces, if at all. The Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) in SAM provides the first search conducted within the Martian atmosphere for this molecule. The initial SAM measurements place an upper limit of just a few parts methane per billion parts of Martian atmosphere, by volume, with enough uncertainty that the amount could be zero.

"Methane is clearly not an abundant gas at the Gale Crater site, if it is there at all. At this point in the mission we're just excited to be searching for it," said SAM TLS lead Chris Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "While we determine upper limits on low values, atmospheric variability in the Martian atmosphere could yet hold surprises for us."

In Curiosity's first three months on Mars, SAM has analyzed atmosphere samples with two laboratory methods. One is a mass spectrometer investigating the full range of atmospheric gases. The other, TLS, has focused on carbon dioxide and methane. During its two-year prime mission, the rover also will use an instrument called a gas chromatograph that separates and identifies gases. The instrument also will analyze samples of soil and rock, as well as more atmosphere samples.

"With these first atmospheric measurements we already can see the power of having a complex chemical laboratory like SAM on the surface of Mars," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Both atmospheric and solid sample analyses are crucial for understanding Mars' habitability."

SAM is set to analyze its first solid sample in the coming weeks, beginning the search for organic compounds in the rocks and soils of Gale Crater. Analyzing water-bearing minerals and searching for and analyzing carbonates are high priorities for upcoming SAM solid sample analyses.

Researchers are using Curiosity's 10 instruments to investigate whether areas in Gale Crater ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, and built Curiosity. The SAM instrument was developed at Goddard with instrument contributions from Goddard, JPL and the University of Paris in France.

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

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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Thursday, November 1, 2012

NASA Maps How Nutrients Affect Plant Productivity

Asteroid Belts at Just the Right Place are Friendly to Life

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

Cheryl S. Gundy 410-338-4707
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
gundy@stsci.edu

News release: 2012-345 Nov. 1, 2012

Asteroid Belts at Just the Right Place are Friendly to Life

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-345&cid=release_2012-345

PASADENA, Calif. -- Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent
on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a
NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio
of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's
planet-forming disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may
determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet.

This might sound surprising because asteroids are considered a nuisance due to their potential to
impact Earth and trigger mass extinctions. But an emerging view proposes that asteroid
collisions with planets may provide a boost to the birth and evolution of complex life.

Asteroids may have delivered water and organic compounds to the early Earth. According to the
theory of punctuated equilibrium, occasional asteroid impacts might accelerate the rate of
biological evolution by disrupting a planet's environment to the point where species must try new
adaptation strategies.

The astronomers based their conclusion on an analysis of theoretical models and archival
observations, including infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

"Our study shows that only a tiny fraction of planetary systems observed to date seem to have
giant planets in the right location to produce an asteroid belt of the appropriate size, offering the
potential for life on a nearby rocky planet," said Martin, the study's lead author. "Our study
suggests that our solar system may be rather special."

The findings will appear today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society:
Letters.

Martin and Livio suggest that the location of an asteroid belt relative to a Jupiter-like planet is
not an accident. The asteroid belt in our solar system, located between Mars and Jupiter, is a
region of millions of space rocks that sits near the "snow line," which marks the border
of a cold region where volatile material such as water ice is far enough from the sun to remain
intact. When Jupiter formed just beyond the snow line, its powerful gravity prevented nearby
material inside its orbit from coalescing and building planets.

Instead, Jupiter's influence caused the material to collide and break apart. These fragmented
rocks settled into an asteroid belt around the sun.

"To have such ideal conditions you need a giant planet like Jupiter that is just outside the asteroid
belt [and] that migrated a little bit, but not through the belt," Livio explained. "If a large planet
like Jupiter migrates through the belt, it would scatter the material. If, on the other hand, a large
planet did not migrate at all, that, too, is not good because the asteroid belt would be too massive.
There would be so much bombardment from asteroids that life may never evolve."

Using our solar system as a model, Martin and Livio proposed that asteroid belts in other solar
systems would always be located approximately at the snow line. To test their proposal, Martin
and Livio created models of planet-forming disks around young stars and calculated the location
of the snow line in those disks based on the mass of the central star.

They then looked at all the existing space-based infrared observations from the Spitzer Space
Telescope of 90 stars having warm dust, which could indicate the presence of an asteroid belt-
like structure. The temperature of the warm dust was consistent with that of the snow line. "The
warm dust falls right onto our calculated snow lines, so the observations are consistent with our
predictions," Martin said.

The duo then studied observations of the 520 giant planets found outside our solar system. Only
19 of them reside outside the snow line. This suggests that most of the giant planets that may
have formed outside the snowline have migrated too far inward to preserve the kind of slightly
dispersed asteroid belt needed to foster enhanced evolution of life on an Earth-like planet near
the belt. Apparently, less than four percent of the observed systems may actually harbor such a
compact asteroid belt.

"Based on our scenario, we should concentrate our efforts to look for complex life in systems
that have a giant planet outside of the snow line," Livio said.

The Sagan Fellowship Program is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., whose purpose is to advance the scientific
and technical goals of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. The Exoplanet Exploration
Program is managed for NASA by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Data
are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis
Center at Caltech.

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

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