NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Reveals Forces Controlling Saturn Moon Jets

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

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

News release: 2013-237 July 31, 2013

NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Reveals Forces Controlling Saturn Moon Jets

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-237&cid=release_2013-237

PASADENA, Calif. -- The intensity of the jets of water ice and organic particles that shoot out from
Saturn's moon Enceladus depends on the moon's proximity to the ringed planet, according to data
obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The finding adds to evidence that a liquid water reservoir or ocean lurks under the icy surface of the
moon. This is the first clear observation the bright plume emanating from Enceladus' south pole
varies predictably. The findings are detailed in a scientific paper in this week's edition of Nature.

"The jets of Enceladus apparently work like adjustable garden hose nozzles," said Matt Hedman, the
paper's lead author and a Cassini team scientist based at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "The
nozzles are almost closed when Enceladus is closer to Saturn and are most open when the moon is
farthest away. We think this has to do with how Saturn squeezes and releases the moon with its
gravity."

Cassini, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, discovered the jets that form the plume in 2005.
The water ice and organic particles spray out from several narrow fissures nicknamed "tiger stripes."

"The way the jets react so responsively to changing stresses on Enceladus suggests they have their
origins in a large body of liquid water," said Christophe Sotin, a co-author and Cassini team member
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Liquid water was key to the development
of life on Earth, so these discoveries whet the appetite to know whether life exists everywhere water
is present."

For years scientists hypothesized the intensity of the jets likely varied over time, but no one had been
able to show they changed in a recognizable pattern. Hedman and colleagues were able to see the
changes by examining infrared data of the plume as a whole, obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared
mapping spectrometer (VIMS), and looking at data gathered over a long period of time.

The VIMS instrument, which enables the analysis of a wide range of data including the hydrocarbon
composition of the surface of another Saturnian moon, Titan, and the seismological signs of Saturn's
vibrations in its rings, collected more than 200 images of the Enceladus plume from 2005 to 2012.

These data show the plume was dimmest when the moon was at the closest point in its orbit to Saturn.
The plume gradually brightened until Enceladus was at the most distant point, where it was three to
four times brighter than the dimmest detection. This is comparable to moving from a dim hallway
into a brightly lit office.

Adding the brightness data to previous models of how Saturn squeezes Enceladus, the scientists
deduced the stronger gravitational squeeze near the planet reduces the opening of the tiger stripes and
the amount of material spraying out. They think the relaxing of Saturn's gravity farther away from
planet allows the tiger stripes to be more open and for the spray to escape in larger quantities.

"Cassini's time at Saturn has shown us how active and kaleidoscopic this planet, its rings and its
moons are," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "We've come a long way from the
placid-looking Saturn that Galileo first spied through his telescope. We hope to learn more about the
forces at work here as a microcosm for how our solar system formed."

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, Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The VIMS team is based at the
University of Arizona in Tucson.

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

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Spitzer Discovers Young Stars with a 'Hula Hoop'

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

Written by Adam Hadhazy
Contact:
Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

News feature: 2013-236 July 31, 2013

Spitzer Discovers Young Stars with a 'Hula Hoop'

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-236&cid=release_2013-236

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have spotted a young stellar system that
"blinks" every 93 days. Called YLW 16A, the system likely consists of three developing stars, two
of which are surrounded by a disk of material left over from the star-formation process.

As the two inner stars whirl around each other, they periodically peek out from the disk that girds
them like a hula hoop. The hoop itself appears to be misaligned from the central star pair, probably
due to the disrupting gravitational presence of the third star orbiting at the periphery of the system.
The whole system cycles through bright and faint phases, with the central stars playing a sort of
cosmic peek-a-boo as the tilted disk twirls around them. It is believed that this disk should go on to
spawn planets and the other celestial bodies that make up a solar system.

Spitzer observed infrared light from YLW 16A, emitted by the warmed gas and dust in the disk that
still swathes the young stars. Other observations came from the ground-based 2MASS survey, as
well as from the NACO instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope
in Chile.

YLW 16A is the fourth example of a star system known to blink in such a manner, and the second
in the same star-forming region Rho Ophiuchus. The finding suggests that these systems might be
more common than once thought. Blinking star systems with warped disks offer scientists a way to
study how planets form in these environments. The planets can orbit one or both of the stars in the
binary star system. The famous science fictional planet Tatooine in "Star Wars" orbits two stars,
hence its double sunsets. Such worlds are referred to as circumbinary planets. Astronomers can
record how light is absorbed by planet-forming disks during the bright and faint phases of blinking
stellar systems, which in turn reveals information about the materials that comprise the disk.

"These blinking systems offer natural probes of the binary and circumbinary planet formation
process," said Peter Plavchan, a scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute and Infrared
Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., and lead
author of a new paper accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission
for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the
Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. 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's WISE Finds Mysterious Centaurs May Be Comets

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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

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

News release: 2013-234 July 25, 2013

NASA's WISE Finds Mysterious Centaurs May Be Comets

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-234&cid=release_2013-234
 
PASADENA, Calf. -- The true identity of centaurs, the small celestial bodies orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune, is one of the enduring mysteries of astrophysics. Are they asteroids or comets? A new study of observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) finds most centaurs are comets.
 
Until now, astronomers were not certain whether centaurs are asteroids flung out from the inner solar system or comets traveling in toward the sun from afar. Because of their dual nature, they take their name from the creature in Greek mythology whose head and torso are human and legs are those of a horse.
 
"Just like the mythical creatures, the centaur objects seem to have a double life," said James Bauer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Bauer is lead author of a paper published online July 22 in the Astrophysical Journal. "Our data point to a cometary origin for most of the objects, suggesting they are coming from deeper out in the solar system."
 
"Cometary origin" means an object likely is made from the same material as a comet, may have been an active comet in the past, and may be active again in the future.
 
The findings come from the largest infrared survey to date of centaurs and their more distant cousins, called scattered disk objects. NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission, gathered infrared images of 52 centaurs and scattered disk objects. Fifteen of the 52 are new discoveries. Centaurs and scattered disk objects orbit in an unstable belt. Ultimately, gravity from the giant planets will fling them either closer to the sun or farther away from their current locations.
 
Although astronomers previously observed some centaurs with dusty halos, a common feature of outgassing comets, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope also found some evidence for comets in the group, they had not been able to estimate the numbers of comets and asteroids.
 
Infrared data from NEOWISE provided information on the objects' albedos, or reflectivity, to help astronomers sort the population. NEOWISE can tell whether a centaur has a matte and dark surface or a shiny one that reflects more light. The puzzle pieces fell into place when astronomers combined the albedo information with what was already known about the colors of the objects. Visible-light observations have shown centaurs generally to be either blue-gray or reddish in hue. A blue-gray object could be an asteroid or comet. NEOWISE showed that most of the blue-gray objects are dark, a telltale sign of comets. A reddish object is more likely to be an asteroid.
 
"Comets have a dark, soot-like coating on their icy surfaces, making them darker than most asteroids," said the study's co-author, Tommy Grav of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. "Comet surfaces tend to be more like charcoal, while asteroids are usually shinier like the moon."
 
The results indicate that roughly two-thirds of the centaur population are comets, which come from the frigid outer reaches of our solar system. It is not clear whether the rest are asteroids. The centaur bodies have not lost their mystique entirely, but future research from NEOWISE may reveal their secrets further.
 
The paper is available online at: http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/773/1/22/ .
 
JPL, managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, managed and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The NEOWISE portion of the project was funded by NASA's Near Earth Object Observation Program. WISE completed its key mission objective, two scans of the entire sky, in 2011 and has been hibernating in space since then.
 
For more information about the WISE mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/wise .
 
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NASA's Spitzer Observes Gas Emission From Comet ISON

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

Geoffrey Brown 240-228-5618
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
geoffrey.brown@jhuapl.edu

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

News release: 2013-231 July 23, 2013

NASA's Spitzer Observes Gas Emission From Comet ISON

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-231&cid=release_2013-231

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have observed what most likely are strong carbon dioxide emissions from Comet ISON ahead of its anticipated pass through the inner solar system later this year.

Images captured June 13 with Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera indicate carbon dioxide is slowly and steadily "fizzing" away from the so-called "soda-pop comet," along with dust, in a tail about 186,400 miles (300,000 kilometers) long.

"We estimate ISON is emitting about 2.2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of what is most likely carbon dioxide gas and about 120 million pounds (54.4 million kilograms) of dust every day," said Carey Lisse, leader of NASA's Comet ISON Observation Campaign and a senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Previous observations made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and Deep Impact spacecraft gave us only upper limits for any gas emission from ISON. Thanks to Spitzer, we now know for sure the comet's distant activity has been powered by gas."

Comet ISON was about 312 million miles (502 million kilometers) from the sun, 3.35 times farther than Earth, when the observations were made.

"These fabulous observations of ISON are unique and set the stage for more observations and discoveries to follow as part of a comprehensive NASA campaign to observe the comet," said James L. Green, NASA's director of planetary science in Washington. "ISON is very exciting. We believe that data collected from this comet can help explain how and when the solar system first formed."

Comet ISON (officially known as C/2012 S1) is less than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) in diameter, about the size of a small mountain, and weighs between 7 billion and 7 trillion pounds (3.2 billion and 3.2 trillion kilograms). Because the comet is still very far away, its true size and density have not been determined accurately. Like all comets, ISON is a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases such as water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide. These are some of the fundamental building blocks, which scientists believe led to the formation of the planets 4.5 billion years ago.

Comet ISON is believed to be inbound on its first passage from the distant Oort Cloud, a roughly spherical collection of comets and comet-like structures that exists in a space between one-tenth light-year and 1 light-year from the sun. The comet will pass within 724,000 miles (1.16 million kilometers) of the sun on Nov. 28.

It is warming up gradually as it gets closer to the sun. In the process, different gases are heating up to the point of evaporation, revealing themselves to instruments in space and on the ground. Carbon dioxide is thought to be the gas that powers emission for most comets between the orbits of Saturn and the asteroids.

The comet was discovered Sept. 21, roughly between Jupiter and Saturn, by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok at the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) near Kislovodsk, Russia. This counts as an early detection of a comet, and the strong carbon dioxide emissions may have made the detection possible.

"This observation gives us a good picture of part of the composition of ISON, and, by extension, of the proto-planetary disk from which the planets were formed," said Lisse. "Much of the carbon in the comet appears to be locked up in carbon dioxide ice. We will know even more in late July and August, when the comet begins to warm up near the water-ice line outside of the orbit of Mars, and we can detect the most abundant frozen gas, which is water, as it boils away from the comet."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in 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://www.nasa.gov/spitzer . Learn more about NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign: http://www.isoncampaign.org . NASA's Comet ISON Toolkit is at: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ison .

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JPL Selects NASA Deep Space Network Subcontractor

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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2013-230 July 23, 2013

JPL Selects NASA Deep Space Network Subcontractor

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-230&cid=release_2013-230

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has selected ITT Exelis Information Systems, Herndon, Va., to operate and maintain the NASA Deep Space Network complex in Goldstone, Calif.; the network's Deep Space Operations Center at JPL; and a facility in Monrovia, Calif., that provides numerous support functions and coordinates among the three Deep Space Network complexes around the world.

The subcontract has a base period of five years, with incentive provisions that can extend it up to 10 years for a total subcontract value of $435 million.

"The Deep Space Network is a lifeline to more than 30 spacecraft in deep space that are sending down unique science data about places like the surface of Mars and the far reaches of our solar system," said Al Bhanji, the Deep Space Network project manager based at JPL. "Its ongoing operation ensures that we'll be able to command those spacecraft to do things like take the pictures the science community and the public are so eager to see, to get those bits of data on the ground and to help engineers address any unexpected issues that may arise."

In 1963, NASA established the Deep Space Network as a separately managed and operated communications facility to accommodate all deep space missions. This avoided the need for each flight project to acquire its own specialized space communications network. During the Apollo period (1967-1972), these stations supported America's missions to the moon, including the historic first manned landing. The Goldstone antenna, in particular, captured Neil Armstrong's historic words and sent them to American television sets while the images came through another antenna.

The Deep Space Network is now sending commands and receiving data from a fleet of robotic spacecraft that includes NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Saturn explorer Cassini and the two Voyager spacecraft, which are more than 9 billion miles (14 billion kilometers) away from Earth. The 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at Goldstone has also used its radar to generate radar images of asteroids, including 1998 QE2, which made a distant flyby of Earth in May 2013.

The California Institute of Technology manages JPL, NASA's only federally funded research and development center. JPL manages the Deep Space Network for NASA Headquarters in Washington. More information about the Deep Space Network is online at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov . More information about NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program is at: https://www.spacecomm.nasa.gov .

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NASA Releases Images of Earth Taken by Distant Spacecraft

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

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: 2013-229 July 22, 2013

NASA Releases Images of Earth Taken by Distant Spacecraft

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-229&cid=release_2013-229

PASADENA, Calif. -- Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, took a black-and-white image from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of the planet.

In the Cassini images Earth and the moon appear as mere dots -- Earth a pale blue and the moon a stark white, visible between Saturn's rings. It was the first time Cassini's highest-resolution camera captured Earth and its moon as two distinct objects.

It also marked the first time people on Earth had advance notice their planet's portrait was being taken from interplanetary distances. NASA invited the public to celebrate by finding Saturn in their part of the sky, waving at the ringed planet and sharing pictures over the Internet. More than 20,000 people around the world participated.

"We can't see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Cassini's picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth."

Pictures of Earth from the outer solar system are rare because from that distance, Earth appears very close to our sun. A camera's sensitive detectors can be damaged by looking directly at the sun, just as a human being can damage his or her retina by doing the same. Cassini was able to take this image because the sun had temporarily moved behind Saturn from the spacecraft's point of view and most of the light was blocked.

A wide-angle image of Earth will become part of a multi-image picture, or mosaic, of Saturn's rings, which scientists are assembling. This image is not expected to be available for several weeks because of the time-consuming challenges involved in blending images taken in changing geometry and at vastly different light levels, with faint and extraordinarily bright targets side by side.

"It thrills me to no end that people all over the world took a break from their normal activities to go outside and celebrate the interplanetary salute between robot and maker that these images represent," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The whole event underscores for me our 'coming of age' as planetary explorers."

In the MESSENGER image, Earth and the moon are less than a pixel, but appear very large because they are overexposed. Long exposures are required to capture as much light as possible from potentially dim objects. Consequently, bright objects in the field of view become saturated and appear artificially large.

"That images of our planet have been acquired on a single day from two distant solar system outposts reminds us of this nation's stunning technical accomplishments in planetary exploration," said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. "And because Mercury and Saturn are such different outcomes of planetary formation and evolution, these two images also highlight what is special about Earth. There's no place like home."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., designed and built MESSENGER, a spacecraft developed under NASA's Discovery Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL and APL manage their respective missions for NASA. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

More information about the picture and the Wave at Saturn campaign is available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/waveatsaturn .

To view the MESSENGER images, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/16Vnt5G .

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NASA Advanced Technology Concepts Selected for Study

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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Jane Platt 818-354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov

David E. Steitz 202-358-1730
NASA Headquarters, Washington
david.steitz@nasa.gov

News release: 2013-227 July 19, 2013

NASA Advanced Technology Concepts Selected for Study

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-227&cid=release_2013-227

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has selected 12 proposals, including two from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for study under Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, which aims to turn science fiction into fact.

The selected proposals include a wide range of imaginative concepts, including 3-D printing of biomaterials, such as arrays of cells; using galactic rays to map the insides of asteroids; and an "eternal flight" platform that could hover in Earth's atmosphere, potentially providing better imaging, Wi-Fi, power generation and other applications.

"NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program invites innovators everywhere -- industry, academia, NASA centers, other agencies -- to propose bold, visionary ideas," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington. "We're working together to transform the future of aerospace while investigating new technologies that may one day benefit our new technology economy and our lives here on Earth."

NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate chose this year's Phase I proposals based on their potential to transform future aerospace missions by enabling either entirely new missions or breakthroughs in future aerospace capabilities, accelerating progress toward NASA's goals.

NIAC Phase I awards are about $100,000 to conduct nine-month initial definition and analysis studies of a concept. If the basic feasibility studies are successful, proposers can apply for Phase II funding of as much as $500,000 for two more years of concept maturation.

"These new Phase I selections include potential breakthroughs for Earth and space science, diverse operations and the potential for new paths that expand human civilization and commerce into space," said NIAC Program Executive Jay Falker.

NASA solicits visionary, long-term concepts for technological maturation based on their potential value to the agency's future space missions and operational needs. The projects are chosen through a peer-review process that evaluates their innovative potential, technical approach, and benefits for study in a timely manner. All are very early in development and typically years from implementation.

NASA's early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers and citizen inventors from across the nation will provide technological dividends and help maintain America's leadership in the global technology economy.

The portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas selected for NIAC awards represent multiple technology areas, including in-space propulsion, human habitation, science instruments, materials for use in space, and exploring other diverse technology paths needed to meet NASA's strategic goals.

NIAC is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in NASA's future missions. These competitively awarded projects are creating new technological solutions for NASA and America's future.

The two JPL proposals are:
* Two-Dimensional Planetary Surface Landers -- Hamid Hemmati,, principal investigator
http://www.nasa.gov/content/two-dimensional-planetary-surface-landers/#.Uel9auDOsX5
* Transformers for Extreme Environments -- Adrian Stoica, principal investigator
http://www.nasa.gov/content/transformers-for-extreme-environments/#.UemCbeDOsX5
For a complete list of the selected proposals and more information about the NIAC, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/niac .
For more information about NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech .

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

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Reports Detail Mars Rover Clues to Atmosphere's Past

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

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

News release: 2013-226 July 18, 2013

Reports Detail Mars Rover Clues to Atmosphere's Past

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-226&cid=release_2013-226

PASADENA, Calif. – A pair of new papers report measurements of the Martian atmosphere's composition by NASA's Curiosity rover, providing evidence about loss of much of Mars' original atmosphere.

Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of laboratory instruments inside the rover has measured the abundances of different gases and different isotopes in several samples of Martian atmosphere. Isotopes are variants of the same chemical element with different atomic weights due to having different numbers of neutrons, such as the most common carbon isotope, carbon-12, and a heavier stable isotope, carbon-13.

SAM checked ratios of heavier to lighter isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the carbon dioxide that makes up most of the planet's atmosphere. Heavy isotopes of carbon and oxygen are both enriched in today's thin Martian atmosphere compared with the proportions in the raw material that formed Mars, as deduced from proportions in the sun and other parts of the solar system. This provides not only supportive evidence for the loss of much of the planet's original atmosphere, but also a clue to how the loss occurred.

"As atmosphere was lost, the signature of the process was embedded in the isotopic ratio," said Paul Mahaffy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. He is the principal investigator for SAM and lead author of one of the two papers about Curiosity results in the July 19 issue of the journal Science.

Other factors also suggest Mars once had a much thicker atmosphere, such as evidence of persistent presence of liquid water on the planet's surface long ago even though the atmosphere is too scant for liquid water to persist on the surface now. The enrichment of heavier isotopes measured in the dominant carbon-dioxide gas points to a process of loss from the top of the atmosphere -- favoring loss of lighter isotopes -- rather than a process of the lower atmosphere interacting with the ground.

Curiosity measured the same pattern in isotopes of hydrogen, as well as carbon and oxygen, consistent with a loss of a substantial fraction of Mars' original atmosphere. Enrichment in heavier isotopes in the Martian atmosphere has previously been measured on Mars and in gas bubbles inside meteorites from Mars. Meteorite measurements indicate much of the atmospheric loss may have occurred during the first billion years of the planet's 4.6-billion-year history. The Curiosity measurements reported this week provide more precise measurements to compare with meteorite studies and with models of atmospheric loss.

The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape, but NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), will do so. "The current pace of the loss is exactly what the MAVEN mission now scheduled to launch in November of this year is designed to determine," Mahaffy said.

The new reports describe analysis of Martian atmosphere samples with two different SAM instruments during the initial 16 weeks of the rover's mission on Mars, which is now in its 50th week. SAM's mass spectrometer and tunable laser spectrometer independently measured virtually identical ratios of carbon-13 to carbon-12. SAM also includes a gas chromatograph and uses all three instruments to analyze rocks and soil, as well as atmosphere.

"Getting the same result with two very different techniques increased our confidence that there's no unknown systematic error underlying the measurements," said Chris Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is the lead scientist for the tunable laser spectrometer and the lead author for one of the two papers. "The accuracy in these new measurements improves the basis for understanding the atmosphere's history."

Curiosity landed inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012 Universal Time (on Aug. 5 PDT). The rover this month began a drive of many months from an area where it found evidence for a past environment favorable for microbial life, toward a layered mound, Mount Sharp, where researchers will seek evidence about how the environment changed.

More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

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

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NASA Interplanetary Probes to Take Pictures of Earth From Space

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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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: 2013-225 July 18, 2013

NASA Interplanetary Probes to Take Pictures of Earth From Space

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-225&cid=release_2013-225

PASADENA, Calif. -- Two NASA spacecraft, one studying the Saturn system, the other observing Mercury, are maneuvering into place to take pictures of Earth on July 19 and 20.

The image taken from the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini spacecraft will occur between 2:27 and 2:42 PDT (5:27 and 5:42 p.m. EDT, or 21:27 and 21:47 UTC) Friday, July 19. Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles (nearly 1.5 billion kilometers) away from Earth. NASA is encouraging the public to look and wave in the direction of Saturn at the time of the portrait and share their pictures via the Internet.

The Cassini Earth portrait is part of a more extensive mosaic -- or multi-image picture -- of the Saturn system as it is backlit by the sun. The viewing geometry highlights the tiniest of ring particles and will allow scientists to see patterns within Saturn's dusty rings. Processing of the Earth images is expected to take a few days, and processing of the full Saturn system mosaic will likely take several weeks.

Inspired in part by the Cassini team's plans to obtain a picture of Earth, scientists reexamined the planned observations of NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. They realized Earth is coincidentally expected to appear in some images taken in a search for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20. Those images will be taken at 4:49 a.m., 5:38 a.m. and 6:41 a.m. PDT (7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. EDT, or 11:49, 12:38, and 13:41 UTC) on both days. Parts of Earth not illuminated in the Cassini images, including all of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, will appear illuminated in the MESSENGER images. MESSENGER's images also will take a few days to process prior to release.

Details on how to find Saturn in the sky and participate in the event are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/waveatsaturn .

The public can share pictures by using the hashtag #waveatsaturn on Twitter, or uploading pictures to the event's Flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/wave_at_saturn/ .

The event's Facebook page is: http://bit.ly/waveatsaturn .

Cassini mission scientists also will be participating in a live Ustream show on Friday from 2 to 2:30 p.m. PDT (5 to 5:30 p.m. EDT): http://www.ustream.com/nasajpl2 .

For more information about the two NASA spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/messenger .

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Disks Don't Need Planets to Make Patterns

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

News release: 2013-221 July 12, 2013

Disks Don't Need Planets to Make Patterns

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-221&cid=release_2013-221

Many young stars known to host planets also possess disks containing dust and icy grains, particles produced by collisions among asteroids and comets also orbiting the star. These debris disks often show sharply defined rings or spiral patterns, features that could signal the presence of orbiting planets. Astronomers study the disk features as a way to better understand the physical properties of known planets and possibly uncover new ones.

But a new study by NASA scientists sounds a cautionary note in interpreting rings and spiral arms as signposts for new planets. Thanks to interactions between gas and dust, a debris disk may, under the right conditions, produce narrow rings on its own -- no planets needed.

"When the mass of gas is roughly equal to the mass of dust, the two interact in a way that leads to clumping in the dust and the formation of patterns," said lead researcher Wladimir Lyra, a Sagan Fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "In essence, the gas shepherds the dust into the kinds of structures we would expect to be see if a planet were present."

A paper describing the findings was published in the July 11 issue of Nature.

The warm dust in debris disks is easy to detect at infrared wavelengths, but estimating the gas content of disks is a much greater challenge. As a result, theoretical studies tend to focus on the role of dust and ice particles, paying relatively little attention to the gas component. Yet icy grains evaporate and collisions produce both gas and dust, so at some level all debris disks must contain some amount of gas.

"All we need to produce narrow rings and other structures in our models of debris disks is a bit of gas, too little for us to detect today in most actual systems," said co-author Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Here's how it works. When high-energy ultraviolet light from the central star strikes a clump of dust and ice grains, it drives electrons off the particles. These high-speed electrons then collide with and heat nearby gas.

The rising gas pressure changes the drag force on the orbiting dust, causing the clump to grow and better heat the gas. This interaction, which the astronomers refer to as the photoelectric instability, continues to cascade. Clumps grow into arcs, rings and oval features in tens of thousands of years, a relatively short time compared to other forces at work in a young solar system.

A model developed by Lyra and Kuchner shows the process at work.

"We were fascinated to watch this structure form in the simulations," Lyra said. "Some of the rings begin to oscillate, and at any moment they have the offset appearance of dust rings we see around many stars, such as Fomalhaut."

In addition, dense clumps with many times the dust density elsewhere in the disk also form during the simulation. When a clump in a ring grows too dense, the ring breaks into arcs and the arcs gradually shrink until only a single compact clump remains. In actual debris disks, some of these dense clumps could reflect enough light to be directly observable.

"We would detect these clumps as bright moving sources of light, which is just what we're looking for when we search for planets," adds Kuchner.

The researchers conclude that the photoelectric instability provides a simple and plausible explanation for many of the features found in debris disks, making the job of planet-hunting astronomers just a little bit harder.

An abstract for the Nature paper, titled "Sharp Eccentric Rings in Planetless Hydrodynamical Models of Debris Disks," is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12281 .

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

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NASA's OPALS to Beam Data From Space Via Laser

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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Stephanie L. Smith 818-393-5464
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
slsmith@jpl.nasa.gov

Joshua Buck 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
jbuck@nasa.gov

News release: 2013-218 July 11, 2013

NASA's OPALS to Beam Data From Space Via Laser

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-218&cid=release_2013-218

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will use the International Space Station to test a new communications technology that could dramatically improve spacecraft communications, enhance commercial missions and strengthen transmission of scientific data.

The Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), an optical technology demonstration experiment, could improve NASA's data rates for communications with future spacecraft by a factor of 10 to 100. OPALS has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It is scheduled to launch to the space station later this year aboard a SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply capsule on the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

"OPALS represents a tangible stepping stone for laser communications, and the International Space Station is a great platform for an experiment like this," said Michael Kokorowski, OPALS project manager at JPL. "Future operational laser communication systems will have the ability to transmit more data from spacecraft down to the ground than they currently do, mitigating a significant bottleneck for scientific investigations and commercial ventures."

OPALS will be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station and communicate with a ground station in Wrightwood, Calif., a mountain town near Los Angeles.

"It's like aiming a laser pointer continuously for two minutes at a dot the diameter of a human hair from 30 feet away while you're walking," explained OPALS systems engineer Bogdan Oaida of JPL.

The OPALS instrument was built at JPL and is slated to fly on the Dragon capsule in late 2013. The mission is expected to run 90 days after installation on the station.

The OPALS Project Office is based at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about OPALS, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/10MMPDO .

For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station .

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Upcoming Educator Workshop Compares Mars and Earth

Educator Workshop July 10, 2013

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

Imagine Mars! Workshop

Date: Saturday, July 20, 2013, 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Target audience: Formal and informal educators for grades 3-8

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

Overview: This standards-based workshop will focus on the similarities and differences in Mars' and Earth's geology. Compare and contrast Earth and Mars images to discover how landscapes evolved. Learn how to make the traditional baking soda and vinegar volcano activity into a geologic and mathematical gold mine! Learn how and why we explore Mars. Engage your students in present and future missions to Mars. This workshop will be restricted to 25 participants so register early

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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Science Team Outlines Goals for NASA's 2020 Mars Rover

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

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

News release: 2013-217 July 9, 2013

Science Team Outlines Goals For NASA's 2020 Mars Rover

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-217&cid=release_2013-217

WASHINGTON -- The rover NASA will send to Mars in 2020 should look for signs of past life, collect samples for possible future return to Earth, and demonstrate technology for future human exploration of the Red Planet, according to a report provided to the agency.

The 154-page document was prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, which NASA appointed in January to outline scientific objectives for the mission. The team, composed of 19 scientists and engineers from universities and research organizations, proposed a mission concept that could accomplish several high-priority planetary science goals and be a major step in meeting President Obama's challenge to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.

"Crafting the science and exploration goals is a crucial milestone in preparing for our next major Mars mission," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "The objectives determined by NASA with the input from this team will become the basis later this year for soliciting proposals to provide instruments to be part of the science payload on this exciting step in Mars exploration."

NASA will conduct an open competition for the payload and science instruments. They will be placed on a rover similar to Curiosity, which landed on Mars almost a year ago. Using Curiosity's design will help minimize mission costs and risks and deliver a rover that can accomplish the mission objectives.

The 2020 mission proposed by the Science Definition Team would build upon the accomplishments of Curiosity and other Mars missions. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers, along with several orbiters, found evidence Mars has a watery history. Curiosity recently confirmed that past environmental conditions on Mars could have supported living microbes. According to the Science Definition Team, looking for signs of past life is the next logical step.

The team's report details how the rover would use its instruments for visual, mineralogical and chemical analysis down to microscopic scale to understand the environment around its landing site and identify biosignatures, or features in the rocks and soil that could have been formed biologically.

"The Mars 2020 mission concept does not presume that life ever existed on Mars," said Jack Mustard, chairman of the Science Definition Team and a professor at the Geological Sciences at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "However, given the recent Curiosity findings, past Martian life seems possible, and we should begin the difficult endeavor of seeking the signs of life. No matter what we learn, we would make significant progress in understanding the circumstances of early life existing on Earth and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life."

The measurements needed to explore a site on Mars to interpret ancient habitability and the potential for preserved biosignatures are identical to those needed to select and cache samples for future return to Earth. The Science Definition Team is proposing the rover collect and package as many as 31 samples of rock cores and soil for a later mission to bring back for more definitive analysis in laboratories on Earth. The science conducted by the rover's instruments would expand our knowledge of Mars and provide the context needed to make wise decisions about whether to return the samples to Earth.

"The Mars 2020 mission will provide a unique capability to address the major questions of habitability and life in the solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "This mission represents a major step towards creating high-value sampling and interrogation methods, as part of a broader strategy for sample returns by planetary missions."

Samples collected and analyzed by the rover will help inform future human exploration missions to Mars. The rover could make measurements and technology demonstrations to help designers of a human expedition understand any hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate how to collect carbon dioxide, which could be a resource for making oxygen and rocket fuel. Improved precision landing technology that enhances the scientific value of robotic missions also will be critical for eventual human exploration on the surface.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages NASA's Mars Exploration Program for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

The complete Science Definition Team report is available online at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/m2020/ .

For more information about NASA's Mars programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

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NASA Discusses Mars 2020 Plans in July 9 Teleconference

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
Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Media advisory: 2013-214b July 8, 2013

NASA Discusses Mars 2020 Plans in July 9 Teleconference

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-214&cid=release_2013-214

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, July 9 to provide details about a report that will help define science objectives for the agency's next Mars rover.

The report, prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team (SDT) NASA appointed in January, is an early, crucial step in developing the mission and the rover's prime science objectives.

The teleconference participants are:

-- John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, Washington
-- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Jack Mustard, SDT chair and professor of geological sciences, Brown University, Providence. R.I.
-- Lindy Elkins-Tanton, SDT member and director of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Washington

The Mars 2020 Science Definition Team report will be posted an hour before the teleconference at:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/m2020/ .

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio . The telecon and graphics will also be streamed on the Web at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .
Graphics for the teleconference will be posted online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mars/telecon20130709

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Radio Bursts Discovered From Beyond our Galaxy

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

News Release: 2013-216 July 8, 2013

Radio Bursts Discovered From Beyond our Galaxy

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-216&cid=release_2013-216

Astronomers, including a team member from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have detected the first population of radio bursts known to originate from galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. The sources of the light bursts are unknown, but cataclysmic events, such as merging or exploding stars, are likely the triggers.

A radio burst is a quick surge of light from a point on the sky, made up of longer wavelengths in the radio portion of the light spectrum. A single radio burst was detected about six years ago, but researchers were unclear about whether it came from within or beyond our galaxy.

The new radio-burst detections -- four in total -- are from billions of light-years away, erasing any doubt that the phenomenon is real. The discovery, described in the July 4 issue of the journal Science, comes from an international team that used the Parkes Observatory in Australia.

"Short radio bursts are really tricky to identify," explained Sarah Burke Spolaor of JPL. "Our team had to search 11 months of data covering a large sky area to find them."

Spolaor developed the software used to seek single pulses in the radio data and pick out genuine signals from local interference sources -- such as cell phones, spark plugs and aircraft. This amounted to an enormous and complex computational task.

Dan Thornton, lead author of the new study from England's University of Manchester and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, said, "The radio bursts last for just a few milliseconds and the farthest one that we detected was 11 billion light-years away."

The findings open the door to studying an entirely new class of eruptive cosmic events and can also help with cosmology mysteries, for example, about the nature of matter in the universe.

Our sky is full of flares and bursts of varying natures. For instance, gamma-ray bursts are thought to occur when stars collapse into black holes. They are routinely detected by a network of telescopes on the ground and in space, including NASA's Swift and Fermi. When one telescope in the network detects a burst, it can notify others to quickly slew to the target for coordinated observations.

The newfound radio bursts, while likely of a different origin than gamma-ray bursts, also consist of light waves generated by powerful events happening at great distances. Researchers would like to develop systems similar to the gamma-ray burst networks of telescopes to follow up quickly on radio bursts, but this is more challenging because radio waves are slowed by gas in space. Time is needed to process the radio observations and tease out the short-lived bursts.

On the other hand, the fact that radio waves are impeded as they travel through space to reach us offers benefits. By studying how the radio waves have been slowed, scientists can better understand baryonic matter, the material that gets in the way. Baryonic matter is what makes up people and planets and everything you see. The rest of the universe consists of mysterious substances called dark matter and dark energy.

Exactly what is triggering the release of the radio waves is unknown. Theories include colliding neutron stars or black holes; evaporating black holes; and stellar explosions called supernovae. The new data do not fit nicely with any of these scenarios, leaving the scientists perplexed.

Further scans for radio bursts using the Parkes Observatory are ongoing. Researchers are also using other telescopes to search for and characterize these events. For instance, the V-Fastr project, developed in part at JPL, is currently running on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array, an international network of telescopes. It will enable scientists to localize a burst's origin to a precise location in a distant host galaxy.

Other institutions participating in this study are: Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany; the INAF-Cagliari Astronomical Observatory and the Cagliari Observatory and University, Italy; Swinburne University of Technology, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics and Curtin University, all in Australia; and West Virginia University, Morgantown.

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

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Long-Running Jason-1 Ocean Satellite Takes Final Bow

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

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

Julien Watelet 011-33-6-88-06-11-48
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, Paris, France
Julien.watelet@cnes.fr

News release: 2013-213 July 3, 2013

Long-Running Jason-1 Ocean Satellite Takes Final Bow

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-213&cid=release_2013-213

PASADENA, Calif. – The curtain has come down on a superstar of the satellite oceanography world that played the "Great Blue Way" of the world's ocean for 11-1/2 years. The successful joint NASA and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite was decommissioned this week following the loss of its last remaining transmitter.

Launched Dec. 7, 2001, and designed to last three to five years, Jason-1 helped create a revolutionary 20-plus-year climate data record of global ocean surface topography that began in 1992 with the launch of the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon satellite. For more than 53,500 orbits of our planet, Jason-1 precisely mapped sea level, wind speed and wave height for more than 95 percent of Earth's ice-free ocean every 10 days. The mission provided new insights into ocean circulation, tracked our rising seas and enabled more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts.

"Jason-1 has been a resounding scientific, technical and international success," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission met all of its requirements, performed an extended mission and demonstrated how a long-term climate data record should be established from successively launched satellites. Since launch, it has charted nearly 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) of rise in global sea levels, a critical measure of climate change and a direct result of global warming. The Jason satellite series provides the most accurate measure of this impact, which is felt all over the globe."

During parts of its mission, Jason-1 flew in carefully coordinated orbits with both its predecessor Topex/Poseidon and its successor, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, launched in 2008. These coordinated orbit periods, which lasted about three years each, cross-calibrated the satellites, making possible a 20-plus-year unbroken climate record of sea level change. These coordination periods also doubled data coverage.

Combined with data from the European Space Agency's Envisat mission, which also measured sea level from space, these data allow scientists to study smaller-scale ocean circulation phenomena, such as coastal tides, ocean eddies, currents and fronts. These small-scale features are thought to be responsible for transporting and mixing heat and other properties, such as nutrients and dissolved carbon dioxide, within the ocean.

"Jason-1 was an exemplary and multi-faceted altimeter mission and contributed so much to so many scientific disciplines," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, CNES president in Paris. "Not only did Jason-1 extend the precise climate record established by Topex/Poseidon, it made invaluable observations for mesoscale ocean studies on its second, interleaved orbit. Even from its 'graveyard' orbit, Jason-1 continued to make unprecedented new observations of the Earth's gravity field, with precise measurements right till the end."

The in-orbit Jason-2 mission, operated by the meteorological agencies of the United States and Europe (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and EUMETSAT, respectively) in collaboration with NASA and CNES, is in good health and continues to collect science and operational data. This same U.S./European team is preparing to launch the next satellite in the series, Jason-3, in March 2015.

Contact was lost with the Jason-1 satellite on June 21 when it was out of visibility of ground stations. At the time of the last contact, Jason-1 and its instruments were healthy, with no indications of any alarms or anomalies. Subsequent attempts to re-establish spacecraft communications from U.S. and French ground stations were unsuccessful. Extensive engineering operations undertaken to recover downlink communications also were unsuccessful.

After consultation with the spacecraft and transmitter manufacturers, it was determined a non-recoverable failure with the last remaining transmitter on Jason-1 was the cause of the loss of contact. The spacecraft's other transmitter experienced a permanent failure in September 2005. There now is no remaining capability to retrieve data from the Jason-1 spacecraft.

On July 1, mission controllers commanded Jason-1 into a safe hold state that reinitialized the satellite. After making several more unsuccessful attempts to locate a signal, mission managers at CNES and NASA decided to proceed with decommissioning Jason-1. The satellite was then commanded to turn off its magnetometer and reaction wheels. Without these attitude control systems, Jason-1 and its solar panels will slowly drift away from pointing at the sun and its batteries will discharge, leaving it totally inert within the next 90 days. The spacecraft will not reenter Earth's atmosphere for at least 1,000 years.

"Like its predecessor Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1 provided one of the most comprehensive pictures of changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean, including the comings and goings of El Nino and La Nina events," said Lee-Lueng Fu, Jason-1 project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "These Pacific Ocean climate cycles are responsible for major shifts in sea level, ocean temperatures and rainfall every two to five years and can sometimes be so large that worldwide weather patterns are affected. Jason-1 data have been instrumental in monitoring and predicting these ever-changing cycles."

In the spring of 2012, based on concern over the limited redundancy of Jason-1's aging control systems, NASA and CNES moved the satellite into its planned final "graveyard" orbit, depleted its extra fuel and reconfigured the mission to make observations that will improve our knowledge of Earth's gravity field over the ocean, in addition to delivering its oceanographic data products.

The first full 406-day marine gravity mission was completed on June 17. The resulting data have already led to the discovery of numerous small seamounts, which are underwater mountains that rise above the deep-sea floor. The data also have significantly increased the resolution of Earth's gravity field over the ocean, while increasing our knowledge of ocean bathymetry, which is the underwater depth of the ocean floor.

JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason-1 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. CNES manages the French portion of the mission.

For more information on Jason-1, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com .

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

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