Top Stories: December 2012

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Science Fair Projects Demystified in JPL Education Videos

Feature December 20, 2012

Science Fair Projects Demystified in JPL Education Videos

Just in time for science fair season, the Education Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a video series designed to take teachers, students and parents through the sometimes mystifying process of crafting a science fair project.

The six-part video series features JPL scientist Serina Diniega, engineer Arby Argueta and educator Ota Lutz, who team up to take viewers step by step through the project design process, from generating an idea to communicating the final results in an attractive display.

Students learn about one of the hardest steps in the process - generating an idea - from the perspectives of scientific investigation and engineering design, discovering how to observe and ask questions about the world around them that can serve as starting points for their projects.

The videos also cover common areas that students often overlook while designing their projects, such as asking a testable question that examines just one concept, and considering elements that could affect an experiment and factoring them into the results.

Visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/sciencefair/ to watch the series, download related resources and to find notes for teachers and parents.

Kim Orr 818-354-0902
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
kimberly.m.orr@jpl.nasa.gov

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One Million Downloads for JPL Space Images App

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

From Cassini for the Holidays: A Splendor Seldom Seen

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011

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

Steve Mullins 720-974-5859
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
media@ciclops.org

Image Advisory: 2012-402 Dec. 18, 2012

From Cassini for the Holidays: A Splendor Seldom Seen

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-402&cid=release_2012-402

PASADENA, Calif -- Just in time for the holidays, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for more than eight years now, has delivered another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings.

On Oct. 17, 2012, during its 174th orbit around the gas giant, Cassini was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow, a perfect location from which to look in the direction of the sun and take a backlit view of the rings and the dark side of the planet. Looking back towards the sun is a geometry referred to by planetary scientists as "high solar phase;" near the center of your target's shadow is the highest phase possible. This is a very scientifically advantageous and coveted viewing position, as it can reveal details about both the rings and atmosphere that cannot be seen in lower solar phase.

The last time Cassini had such an unusual perspective on Saturn and its rings, at sufficient distance and with sufficient time to make a full system mosaic, occurred in September 2006, when it captured a mosaic, processed to look like natural color, entitled "In Saturn's Shadow" (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=PIA08329 ). In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making "In Saturn's Shadow" one of the most popular Cassini images to date.

The mosaic being released today by the mission and the imaging team, in celebration of the 2012 holiday season, does not contain Earth; along with the sun, our planet is hidden behind Saturn. However, it was taken when Cassini was closer to Saturn and therefore shows more detail in the rings than the one taken in 2006.

The new processed mosaic, composed of 60 images taken in the violet, visible and near infrared part of the spectrum, can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .

"Of all the many glorious images we have received from Saturn, none are more strikingly unusual than those taken from Saturn's shadow," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini's imaging team lead based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the U.S., England, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

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Monday, December 17, 2012

NASA's GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Astronaut Sally Ride

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

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

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

Sarah McDonnell 617-253-8923
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
s_mcd@mit.edu

News release: 2012-401 Dec. 17, 2012

NASA's GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Astronaut Sally Ride

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-401&cid=release_2012-401

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has named the site where twin agency spacecraft impacted the moon Monday in honor of the late astronaut Sally K. Ride, who was America's first woman in space and a member of the probes' mission team.

Last Friday, Ebb and Flow, the two spacecraft comprising NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, were commanded to descend into a lower orbit that would result in an impact Monday on a mountain near the moon's north pole. The formation-flying duo hit the lunar surface as planned at 2:28:51 p.m. PST (5:28:51 p.m. EST) and 2:29:21 p.m. PST (5:29:21 p.m. EST) at a speed of 3,760 mph (1.7 kilometers per second). The location of the Sally K. Ride Impact Site is on the southern face of an approximately 1.5-mile-tall (2.5-kilometer) mountain near a crater named Goldschmidt.

"Sally was all about getting the job done, whether it be in exploring space, inspiring the next generation, or helping make the GRAIL mission the resounding success it is today," said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "As we complete our lunar mission, we are proud we can honor Sally Ride's contributions by naming this corner of the moon after her."

The impact marked a successful end to the GRAIL mission, which was NASA's first planetary mission to carry cameras fully dedicated to education and public outreach. Ride, who died in July after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, led GRAIL's MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students) Program through her company, Sally Ride Science, in San Diego.

Along with its primary science instrument, each spacecraft carried a MoonKAM camera that took more than 115,000 total images of the lunar surface. Imaging targets were proposed by middle school students from across the country and the resulting images returned for them to study. The names of the spacecraft were selected by Ride and the mission team from student submissions in a nationwide contest.

"Sally Ride worked tirelessly throughout her life to remind all of us, especially girls, to keep questioning and learning," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. "Today her passion for making students part of NASA's science is honored by naming the impact site for her."

Fifty minutes prior to impact, the spacecraft fired their engines until the propellant was depleted. The maneuver was designed to determine precisely the amount of fuel remaining in the tanks. This will help NASA engineers validate computer models to improve predictions of fuel needs for future missions.

"Ebb fired its engines for 4 minutes 3 seconds, and Flow fired its for 5 minutes 7 seconds," said GRAIL project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It was one final important set of data from a mission that was filled with great science and engineering data."

The mission team deduced that much of the material aboard each spacecraft was broken up in the energy released during the impacts. Most of what remained probably is buried in shallow craters. The craters' size may be determined when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter returns images of the area in several weeks.

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow had been orbiting the moon since Jan. 1, 2012. The probes intentionally were sent into the lunar surface because they did not have sufficient altitude or fuel to continue science operations. Their successful prime and extended science missions generated the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

"We will miss our lunar twins, but the scientists tell me it will take years to analyze all the great data they got, and that is why we came to the moon in the first place," Lehman said. "So long, Ebb and Flow, and we thank you."

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

Join the conversation on Twitter by following the hashtag #GRAIL. To learn more about all the ways to connect and collaborate with NASA, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/connect .

For the mission's press kit and other information about GRAIL, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail . You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl .

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Friday, December 14, 2012

NASA to Provide Commentary as Grail Moon Mission Ends

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Students Chosen as Cassini Scientists for a Day

Feature December 13, 2012

Students Chosen as Cassini Scientists for a Day

Eleven U.S. students have won NASA's 2012 Cassini Scientist for a Day essay contest. Contest participants had to choose one of three target areas for Cassini's camera: Saturn's moon Pan, Saturn's F Ring, or Saturn. The students had to write an essay explaining why they thought their chosen picture had the most scientific merit. The winners and their classes are being invited to discuss their essays with Cassini scientists via a teleconference, videoconference, or web chat.

A panel of Cassini scientists, mission planners, and the education and outreach team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California judged the essays.

This year's winners come from California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington State.

Their essays were chosen from entries written by 2,032 fifth- to twelfth-grade students across the United States. One hundred and seventy teachers in 36 states had their students participate in the essay contest this year.

Richard Zhan, a fifth-grader at Willow Springs Elementary School in Fairfax, Virginia, wrote about Saturn's moon, Pan. In his essay, Richard writes, "As a young scientist, I believe that Cassini should point the cameras at Pan due to its gravity, interesting composition, and odd shape."

Evan Grahn, a sixth-grader from Magnolia Elementary School in Upland, California, wrote about Saturn's F Ring. In his essay, Evan writes, "The thing that fascinates me the most about Saturn's 'F' ring is what some people call 'mini-jets.' I find it amazing how the 'mini-jets' are formed. I liked watching the videos on the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory website that showed debris floating into the 'F' ring and how the debris bounces off carrying out the ice particles. What I find really intriguing is how 'mini-jets' can be destroyed or created by the debris in the 'F' ring. What causes this process?"

Bradyn Shelley and Sam Phillips, two sixth-graders from Shelley Elementary School in American Fork, Utah, wrote about Saturn. In their essay, Bradyn and Sam write, "If you were to choose Target 3 [Saturn], it would be a very good chance to observe Saturn's weather patterns. You would also be able to research the planet's polar aurora, and study the Great White Spot, Saturn's gigantic storm. But who knows, a new storm could start, one bigger than the Great White Spot, and you could get photos of that. Maybe some of Saturn's colors will change - anything could happen."

Michaela Leung, a seventh-grader from Odyssey Middle School in Bainbridge Island, Washington, wrote about Saturn. In her essay, Michaela writes, "One of the rings, the E ring is made of mostly of small particles spewed out by Enceladus. Most of the other rings are made out of small pieces of ice and rock. How did they become that way? Are they the remnants of unfortunate moons? Or are they the last remains of planetoids from the formation of the solar system? These are just a few of the many questions that could be answered by Target 3 [Saturn]."

Arseny Mikhailov, an eighth-grader from Linwood Middle School in North Brunswick, New Jersey, wrote about Saturn's moon Pan. In his essay, Arseny writes, "Very little is currently known about Pan, but if we had more information it could help us understand the formation of the planets and since all things in the universe are similar in one way or another, Pan could probably give us more information about our moon too. If the Cameras on Cassini are aimed at Pan we could get a lot of information and a stunning image all in one."

Mary Joyce, an eighth-grader from King Middle School in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, wrote about Saturn's F Ring. In her essay, Mary writes, "This is not just your average ring we are discussing here. The F-ring is extremely unique. It is often altering its appearance within a matter of several hours. This fluctuation is due to the obscure gravitational forces acting on it. The ring sits at a balancing point between the massive force of Saturn, trying to break things apart and self-gravity, pulling objects together."

Zoe Aridor, a tenth-grader from Fox Chapel Area High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wrote about Saturn's F Ring. Zoe writes, "Dynamic and full of exciting discoveries, Saturn's F Ring would be the most interesting and rewarding subject to study. From a distance, the F Ring is unnoticeable, only a few hundred kilometers wide and, but despite its size, it is one of the most active rings in the entire solar system and the most eccentric of Saturn's ring system. "

Ruchica Chandnani, a tenth-grader from Troy High School in Troy, Michigan, wrote about Saturn. In her essay, Ruchica writes, "Beneath its serene, beautiful exterior, Saturn is a book of secrets waiting for scientists to read page by page and unearth more about the cosmological activities in our universe, one discovery at a time. This makes Target 3, Saturn, my choice for scientific finding and breakthrough."

Anissa Lee and Ming Wang, a pair of eleventh-graders from The Winsor School in Boston, Massachusetts, wrote about Saturn's moon Pan. Anissa and Ming write, "Currently nothing more than computer simulations and theories can suggest how Pan's surrounding debris could have aggregated to form the moon. Closer inspection of Pan and its formation could help scientists understand how, during the formation of the universe, debris around newborn suns could have combined to make planets and other celestial bodies in the same manner as Pan formed around Saturn."

The next opportunity to participate in the Cassini Scientist for a Day essay contest will be in 2013. A similar essay contest covering Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa will be held in winter 2012-13.

More information is online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/scientistforaday/

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

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

Media Contact:
Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Educators Contact:
Rachel Zimmerman-Brachman 818-393-6847
Rachel.zimmerman-brachman@jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA Probes Prepare for Mission-Ending Moon Impact

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

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

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

Sarah McDonnell 617-253-8923
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
s_mcd@mit.edu

News release: 2012-396 Dec. 13, 2012

NASA Probes Prepare for Mission-Ending Moon Impact

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-396&cid=release_2012-396

PASADENA, Calif. -- Twin lunar-orbiting NASA spacecraft that have allowed scientists to learn more about the internal structure and composition of the moon are being prepared for their controlled descent and impact on a mountain near the moon's north pole at about 2:28 p.m. PST (5:28 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 17.

Ebb and Flow, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission probes, are being sent purposely into the lunar surface because their low orbit and low fuel levels preclude further scientific operations. The duo's successful prime and extended science missions generated the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

"It is going to be difficult to say goodbye," said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "Our little robotic twins have been exemplary members of the GRAIL family, and planetary science has advanced in a major way because of their contributions."

The mountain where the two spacecraft will make contact is located near a crater named Goldschmidt. Both spacecraft have been flying in formation around the moon since Jan. 1, 2012. They were named by elementary school students in Bozeman, Mont., who won a contest. The first probe to reach the moon, Ebb, also will be the first to go down, at 2:28:40 p.m. PST. Flow will follow Ebb about 20 seconds later.

Both spacecraft will hit the surface at 3,760 mph (1.7 kilometers per second). No imagery of the impact is expected because the region will be in shadow at the time.

Ebb and Flow will conduct one final experiment before their mission ends. They will fire their main engines until their propellant tanks are empty to determine precisely the amount of fuel remaining in their tanks. This will help NASA engineers validate fuel consumption computer models to improve predictions of fuel needs for future missions.

"Our lunar twins may be in the twilight of their operational lives, but one thing is for sure, they are going down swinging," said GRAIL project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Even during the last half of their last orbit, we are going to do an engineering experiment that could help future missions operate more efficiently."

Because the exact amount of fuel remaining aboard each spacecraft is unknown, mission navigators and engineers designed the depletion burn to allow the probes to descend gradually for several hours and skim the surface of the moon until the elevated terrain of the target mountain gets in their way.

The burn that will change the spacecrafts' orbit and ensure the impact is scheduled to take place Friday morning, Dec. 14.

"Such a unique end-of-mission scenario requires extensive and detailed mission planning and navigation," said Lehman. "We've had our share of challenges during this mission and always come through in flying colors, but nobody I know around here has ever flown into a moon mountain before. It'll be a first for us, that's for sure."

During their prime mission, from March through May, Ebb and Flow collected data while orbiting at an average altitude of 34 miles (55 kilometers). Their altitude was lowered to 14 miles (23 kilometers) for their extended mission, which began Aug. 30 and sometimes placed them within a few miles of the moon's tallest surface features.

JPL manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission 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. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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

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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

NASA Celebrates 50 Years of Planetary Exploration

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

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

News release: 2012-395 Dec. 12, 2012

NASA Celebrates 50 Years of Planetary Exploration

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-395&cid=release_2012-395

PASADENA, Calif. -- Fifty years ago on a mid-December day, NASA's Mariner 2 spacecraft sailed close to the shrouded planet Venus, marking the first time any spacecraft had ever successfully made a close-up study of another planet. The flyby, 36 million miles (58 million kilometers) away from Earth, gave America its first bona fide space "first" after five years in which the Soviet Union led with several space exploration milestones. Designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the successful Mariner 2 spacecraft ushered in a new era of solar system exploration.

"JPL has always attempted to do mighty things on behalf of NASA and our nation," said JPL director Charles Elachi. "Achieving America's first 'first in space' is among the lab's proudest achievements."

In celebration of the anniversary, an interactive presentation highlighting 50 years of planetary exploration is available online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/50years .

The first Mariners were designed and built on an extremely demanding schedule. JPL had to ready three probes – two to fly to Venus and one spare -- in less than a year, with strict weight limits.

Getting to Venus was no easy feat. The Soviet Union suffered several failures in their attempts to get to Venus in 1961. And the rocket carrying NASA's first attempt, Mariner 1, began to fishtail shortly after launch. The range safety officer pushed the self-destruct button four minutes and 53 seconds into flight.

Mariner 2 was launched Aug. 27, 1962, from Cape Canaveral. Shortly after liftoff, the rocket began to roll, making it unable to respond to guidance commands. In the first of a series of Mariner "miracles," the electrical short causing the issue mysteriously healed itself after about a minute.

En route to Venus, Mariner 2 encountered many problems that nearly ended its mission. Among these were a solar panel that twice stopped working, a balky sensor designed to locate Earth and gyros that mysteriously misbehaved. Most troubling of all, temperatures on the spacecraft climbed to alarming levels as Mariner 2 drew closer to Venus. Mission controllers worried the spacecraft might cook itself before reaching its destination.

But on Dec. 14, 1962, Mariner 2 hit its expected mark, gliding within 21,564 miles (13,399 kilometers) of our closest planetary neighbor. Machines at JPL spit out rolls of paper tape with microwave, infrared, radiation and magnetic fields data.

The encounter produced the first close-up measurements of Venus's scorching surface temperature, helping to confirm scientists' hypotheses of a runaway "greenhouse" effect that trapped heat from the sun under an atmospheric blanket. The spacecraft's precision tracking also enabled navigators to use radio signals to measure the effect of Venus's gravity on the spacecraft and calculate the most precise figure ever of the planet's mass.

The mission also made scientific discoveries beyond Venus. During Mariner 2's cruise phase, it was the first to confirm the existence of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun. Its data also enabled scientists to refine the value for an astronomical unit, the average distance between Earth and the sun. Mariner 2 also showed that micrometeorites and the radiation environment were not significant threats in that part of the solar system.

Mariner 2 was a thrilling success during the early, uncertain days of space exploration. As Mariner 2's project manager Jack James of JPL reflected before his death in 2001, "There will be other missions to Venus, but there will never be another first mission to Venus."

Six other successful Mariner missions to Venus, Mars and Mercury followed. And in the ensuing decades, NASA sent spacecraft to all the planets, as well as comets, asteroids and other unfamiliar worlds in our solar system.

For a fuller history of Mariner 2's visit of Venus: visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mariner2/ .

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

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Cassini Spots Mini Nile River on Saturn Moon

Monday, December 10, 2012

NASA to Host Dec. 13 Telecon on Twin Probes' Mission-Ending Moon Impact

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Little Telescope Spies Gigantic Galaxy Clusters

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

News feature: 2012-388 Dec. 6, 2012

Little Telescope Spies Gigantic Galaxy Clusters

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-388&cid=release_2012-388

Our solar system, with its colorful collection of planets, asteroids and comets, is a fleck in the grander cosmos. Hundreds of billions of solar systems are thought to reside in our Milky Way galaxy, which is itself just a drop in a sea of galaxies.

The rarest and largest of galaxy groupings, called galaxy clusters, can be the hardest to find. That's where NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) can help. The mission's all-sky infrared maps have revealed one distant galaxy cluster and are expected to uncover thousands more.

These massive structures are collections of up to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. They were born out of seeds of matter formed in the very early universe, and grew rapidly by a process called inflation.

"One of the key questions in cosmology is how did the first bumps and wiggles in the distribution of matter in our universe rapidly evolve into the massive structures of galaxies we see today," said Anthony Gonzalez of University of Florida, Gainesville, who led the research program. The results are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"By uncovering the most massive of galaxy clusters billions of light-years away with WISE, we can test theories of the universe's early inflation period."

WISE completed its all-sky survey in 2011, after surveying the entire sky twice at infrared wavelengths. The 16-inch (40-centimeter) telescope ran out of its coolant as expected in 2010, but went on to complete the second sky scan using two of its four infrared channels, which still functioned without coolant. At that time, the goal of the mission extension was to hunt for more near-Earth asteroids via a project called NEOWISE.

NASA has since funded the WISE team to combine all that data, allowing astronomers to study everything from nearby stars to distant galaxies. These next-generation all-sky images, part of a new project called "AllWISE," will be significantly more sensitive than those previously released, and will be publicly available in late 2013.

Gonzalez and his team plan to use the enhanced WISE data to hunt for more massive galaxy clusters. The first one they spotted, MOO J2342.0+1301, is located more than 7 billion light-years away, or halfway back to the time of the Big Bang. It is hundreds of times more massive than our Milky Way.

By scanning the whole sky with the improved AllWISE data, the team will sleuth out the true monsters of the bunch, clusters as big as thousands of times the mass of the Milky Way, assembled even earlier in the history of the universe.

Galaxy clusters from the first half of the universe are hard to find because they are so far away and because not very many had time to assemble by then. What's more, they are especially hard to see using visible-light telescopes: light that left these faraway structures in visible wavelengths has been stretched into longer, infrared wavelengths due to the expansion of space. WISE can hunt some of these rare colossal structures down because it scanned the whole sky in infrared light.

"I had pretty much written off using WISE to find distant galaxy clusters because we had to reduce the telescope diameter to only 16 inches [40 centimeters] to stay within our cost guidelines, so I am thrilled that we can find them after all," said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. and an author of the new paper. "The longer exposures from AllWISE open the door wide to see the most massive structures forming in the distant universe."

Other projects planned for the enhanced WISE data include the search for nearby, hidden cool stars, including those with masses as low as planets. If a large planet or tiny star does exist close to our solar system, an object some call "Tyche," then WISE's infrared data may reveal it.

Other authors of the new study are: Daniel Gettings and Conor Mancone of the University of Florida; Adam Stanford of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., and University of California, Davis; Mark Brodwin of University of Missouri, Kansas City; Daniel Stern of JPL; Gregory Zeimann of University of California, Davis; Frank Masci of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; Casey Papovich of Texas A&M University, College Station; Ichi Tanaka of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; and Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA.

JPL manages, and operated, WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Edward Wright is the principal investigator and 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, Utah. 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 , http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

NASA's GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map

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NASA Headquarters, Washington
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Sarah McDonnell 617-253-8923
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
s_mcd@mit.edu

News release: 2012-385 Dec. 5, 2012

NASA's GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-385&cid=release_2012-385

PASADENA, Calif. -- Twin NASA probes orbiting Earth's moon have generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.

The new map, created by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, is allowing scientists to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. Data from the two washing machine-sized spacecraft also will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

The gravity field map reveals an abundance of features never before seen in detail, such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks and numerous simple, bowl-shaped craters. Data also show the moon's gravity field is unlike that of any terrestrial planet in our solar system.

These are the first scientific results from the prime phase of the mission, and they are published in three papers in the journal Science.

"What this map tells us is that more than any other celestial body we know of, the moon wears its gravity field on its sleeve," said GRAIL Principal Investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "When we see a notable change in the gravity field, we can sync up this change with surface topography features such as craters, rilles or mountains."

According to Zuber, the moon's gravity field preserves the record of impact bombardment that characterized all terrestrial planetary bodies and reveals evidence for fracturing of the interior extending to the deep crust and possibly the mantle. This impact record is preserved, and now precisely measured, on the moon.

The probes revealed the bulk density of the moon's highland crust is substantially lower than generally assumed. This low-bulk crustal density agrees well with data obtained during the final Apollo lunar missions in the early 1970s, indicating that local samples returned by astronauts are indicative of global processes.

"With our new crustal bulk density determination, we find that the average thickness of the moon's crust is between 21 and 27 miles (34 and 43 kilometers), which is about 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers) thinner than previously thought," said Mark Wieczorek, GRAIL co-investigator at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. "With this crustal thickness, the bulk composition of the moon is similar to that of Earth. This supports models where the moon is derived from Earth materials that were ejected during a giant impact event early in solar system history."

The map was created by the spacecraft transmitting radio signals to define precisely the distance between them as they orbit the moon in formation. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between the two spacecraft will change slightly.

"We used gradients of the gravity field in order to highlight smaller and narrower structures than could be seen in previous datasets," said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL guest scientist with the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. "This data revealed a population of long, linear gravity anomalies, with lengths of hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing the surface. These linear gravity anomalies indicate the presence of dikes, or long, thin, vertical bodies of solidified magma in the subsurface. The dikes are among the oldest features on the moon, and understanding them will tell us about its early history."

While results from the primary science mission are just beginning to be released, the collection of gravity science by the lunar twins continues. GRAIL's extended mission science phase began Aug. 30 and will conclude Dec. 17. As the end of mission nears, the spacecraft will operate at lower orbital altitudes above the moon.

When launched in September 2011, the probes were named GRAIL A and B. They were renamed Ebb and Flow in January by elementary students in Bozeman, Mont., in a nationwide contest. Ebb and Flow were placed in a near-polar, near-circular orbit at an altitude of approximately 34 miles (55 kilometers) on Dec. 31, 2011, and Jan. 1, 2012, respectively.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. GRAIL is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver built the spacecraft.

To view the lunar gravity map, visit http://bit.ly/grailtour . For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail .

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

NASA Opportunity Rover Finishes Walkabout on Mars Crater Rim

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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
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dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

News release: 2012-383 Dec. 4, 2012

NASA Opportunity Rover Does Walkabout of Crater Rim

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-383&cid=release_2012-383

PASADENA, Calif. – The latest work assignment for NASA's long-lived Mars rover Opportunity is a further examination of an area where the robot just completed a walkabout.

"If you are a geologist studying a site like this, one of the first things you do is walk the outcrop, and that's what we've done with Opportunity," said Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Coming up on its ninth anniversary, Opportunity still is a capable robotic explorer. It has been investigating a crater-rim site where observations from orbiting Mars spacecraft detected traces of clay minerals, which form under wet, non-acidic conditions that can be favorable for life. The rover's current activities were presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

The rover team chose this site as a driving destination years earlier. The site is named Matijevic Hill in honor of the late Jacob Matijevic, who led the engineering team for the twin Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity for several years.

Opportunity drove about 1,160 feet (354 meters) in a counterclockwise circuit around Matijevic Hill in October and November, bringing the total miles driven on the mission to 22 miles (35.4 kilometers). Researchers used the rover to survey the extent of Matijevic Hill outcrops and identify the best places to investigate further.

"We've got a list of questions posed by the observations so far," Squyres said. "We did this walkabout to determine the most efficient use of time to answer the questions. Now we have a good idea what we're dealing with, and we're ready to start the detailed work."

The hill is on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, a bowl 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. An impact from a celestial object dug this crater more than 3 billion years ago, pushing rocks onto the rim from a greater depth than Opportunity reached during its first several years on Mars. Since the impact, those rocks may have been altered by environmental conditions. Sorting out the relative ages of local outcrops is a key to understanding the area's environmental history.

"Almost nine years into a mission planned to last for three months, Opportunity is fit and ready for driving, robotic-arm operations and communication with Earth," said the mission's deputy project scientist, Diana Blaney, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Two outcrops of high interest on Matijevic Hill are "Whitewater Lake" and "Kirkwood." Whitewater Lake is light-toned material that science team members believe may contain clay. Kirkwood contains small spheres with composition, structure and distribution that differ from other iron-rich spherules, nicknamed blueberries, that Opportunity found at its landing site and throughout the Meridiani Planum area it has explored. Squyres calls the Kirkwood spheres "newberries."

"We don't know yet whether Whitewood Lake and Kirkwood are from before or after the crater formed," he said. "One of the most important things to work out is the order and position of the rock layers to tell us the relative ages. We also need more work on the composition of Whitewater and debris shed by Whitewater to understand the clay signature seen from orbit, and on the composition of the newberries to understand how they formed."

NASA launched Spirit and Opportunity in 2003. Both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004 with Spirit ceasing operations in 2010. The mission's goal is to learn about the history of wet environments on ancient Mars. JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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Monday, December 3, 2012

NASA's Curiosity Rover Wants Your Vote

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Feature Dec. 3, 2012

NASA's Curiosity Rover Wants Your Vote

TIME magazine has nominated NASA's most technologically advanced rover yet as one of its nearly 40 candidates for the "Person of the Year" designation. Describing the sole robotic nominee as the "best car in the solar system" that captured the attention of millions when it completed a fraught landing sequence with seamless grace, TIME is giving readers a chance to cast their vote for the venerable spacecraft.

Visit the TIME poll (http://ti.me/WEZT8y) to cast your vote before 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 12. The people's choice winner will be announced on Dec. 14.

A real-time ranking of all the nominees, including Curiosity, is available at http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2128881_2129111_2129112,00.html.

For more information about Curiosity and other Mars missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

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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NASA Voyager 1 Encounters New Region in Deep Space

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2012-381 Dec. 3, 2012

NASA Voyager 1 Encounters New Region in Deep Space

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-381&cid=release_2012-381

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of
our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching
interstellar space.

Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun's
magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. This connection allows lower-
energy charged particles that originate from inside our heliosphere -- or the bubble of charged
particles the sun blows around itself -- to zoom out and allows higher-energy particles from outside to
stream in. Before entering this region, the charged particles bounced around in all directions, as if
trapped on local roads inside the heliosphere.

The Voyager team infers this region is still inside our solar bubble because the direction of the
magnetic field lines has not changed. The direction of these magnetic field lines is predicted to
change when Voyager breaks through to interstellar space. The new results were described at the
American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Monday.

"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the
outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone,
Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We believe this
is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a
couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected
from Voyager."

Since December 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed a point in space called the termination shock, the
spacecraft has been exploring the heliosphere's outer layer, called the heliosheath. In this region, the
stream of charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, abruptly slowed down from
supersonic speeds and became turbulent. Voyager 1's environment was consistent for about five and a
half years. The spacecraft then detected that the outward speed of the solar wind slowed to zero.

The intensity of the magnetic field also began to increase at that time.

Voyager data from two onboard instruments that measure charged particles showed the spacecraft
first entered this magnetic highway region on July 28, 2012. The region ebbed away and flowed
toward Voyager 1 several times. The spacecraft entered the region again Aug. 25 and the
environment has been stable since.

"If we were judging by the charged particle data alone, I would have thought we were outside the
heliosphere," said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator of the low-energy charged particle
instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. "But we need to
look at what all the instruments are telling us and only time will tell whether our interpretations about
this frontier are correct."

Spacecraft data revealed the magnetic field became stronger each time Voyager entered the highway
region; however, the direction of the magnetic field lines did not change.

"We are in a magnetic region unlike any we've been in before -- about 10 times more intense than
before the termination shock -- but the magnetic field data show no indication we're in interstellar
space," said Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The magnetic field data turned out to be the key to
pinpointing when we crossed the termination shock. And we expect these data will tell us when we
first reach interstellar space."

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977. At least one of the spacecraft has visited
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object, about 11
billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the sun. The signal from Voyager 1 takes
approximately 17 hours to travel to Earth. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated spacecraft, is
about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun. While Voyager 2 has seen changes
similar to those seen by Voyager 1, the changes are much more gradual. Scientists do not think
Voyager 2 has reached the magnetic highway.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's
Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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

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NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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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

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

News release: 2012-380 Dec. 3, 2012

NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-380&cid=release_2012-380

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to
analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil.
Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in
samples Curiosity's arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover.

Detection of the substances during this early phase of the mission demonstrates the laboratory's
capability to analyze diverse soil and rock samples over the next two years. Scientists also have
been verifying the capabilities of the rover's instruments.

Curiosity is the first Mars rover able to scoop soil into analytical instruments. The specific soil
sample came from a drift of windblown dust and sand called "Rocknest." The site lies in a
relatively flat part of Gale Crater still miles away from the rover's main destination on the slope
of a mountain called Mount Sharp. The rover's laboratory includes the Sample Analysis at Mars
(SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. SAM used three methods
to analyze gases given off from the dusty sand when it was heated in a tiny oven. One class of
substances SAM checks for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be
ingredients for life.

"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in
the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Curiosity's APXS instrument and the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's
arm confirmed Rocknest has chemical-element composition and textural appearance similar to
sites visited by earlier NASA Mars rovers Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity's team selected Rocknest as the first scooping site because it has fine sand particles
suited for scrubbing interior surfaces of the arm's sample-handling chambers. Sand was vibrated
inside the chambers to remove residue from Earth. MAHLI close-up images of Rocknest show a
dust-coated crust one or two sand grains thick, covering dark, finer sand.

"Active drifts on Mars look darker on the surface," said MAHLI Principal Investigator Ken
Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. "This is an older drift that has had time to
be inactive, letting the crust form and dust accumulate on it."

CheMin's examination of Rocknest samples found the composition is about half common
volcanic minerals and half non-crystalline materials such as glass. SAM added information about
ingredients present in much lower concentrations and about ratios of isotopes. Isotopes are
different forms of the same element and can provide clues about environmental changes. The
water seen by SAM does not mean the drift was wet. Water molecules bound to grains of sand or
dust are not unusual, but the quantity seen was higher than anticipated.

SAM tentatively identified the oxygen and chlorine compound perchlorate. This is a reactive
chemical previously found in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix Lander. Reactions with
other chemicals heated in SAM formed chlorinated methane compounds -- one-carbon organics
that were detected by the instrument. The chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the
carbon may be of Earth origin, carried by Curiosity and detected by SAM's high sensitivity
design.

"We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift," said Curiosity Project
Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The synergies
of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the
mission's main science destination on Mount Sharp."

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale
Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, a division of Caltech, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington, and built Curiosity.

For more information about Curiosity and other Mars missions, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

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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