JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW NASA's NuSTAR Captures Possible 'Screams' from Zombie Stars Peering into the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has spotted a mysterious glow of high-energy X-rays that, according to scientists, could be the "howls" of dead stars as they feed on stellar companions. "We can see a completely new component of the center of our galaxy with NuSTAR's images," said Kerstin Perez of Columbia University in New York, lead author of a new report on the findings in the journal Nature. "We can't definitively explain the X-ray signal yet -- it's a mystery. More work needs to be done." The center of our Milky Way galaxy is bustling with young and old stars, smaller black holes and other varieties of stellar corpses -- all swarming around a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. NuSTAR, launched into space in 2012, is the first telescope capable of capturing crisp images of this frenzied region in high-energy X-rays. The new images show a region around the supermassive black hole about 40 light-years across. Astronomers were surprised by the pictures, which reveal an unexpected haze of high-energy X-rays dominating the usual stellar activity. "Almost anything that can emit X-rays is in the galactic center," said Perez. "The area is crowded with low-energy X-ray sources, but their emission is very faint when you examine it at the energies that NuSTAR observes, so the new signal stands out." Astronomers have four theories to explain the baffling X-ray glow, three of which involve different classes of stellar corpses. When stars die, they don't always go quietly into the night. Unlike stars like our sun, collapsed dead stars that belong to stellar pairs, or binaries, can siphon matter from their companions. This zombie-like "feeding" process differs depending on the nature of the normal star, but the result may be an eruption of X-rays. According to one theory, a type of stellar zombie called a pulsar could be at work. Pulsars are the collapsed remains of stars that exploded in supernova blasts. They can spin extremely fast and send out intense beams of radiation. As the pulsars spin, the beams sweep across the sky, sometimes intercepting Earth, like lighthouse beacons. "We may be witnessing the beacons of a hitherto hidden population of pulsars in the galactic center," said co-author Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, principal investigator of NuSTAR. "This would mean there is something special about the environment in the very center of our galaxy." Other possible culprits include heavy-set stellar corpses called white dwarfs, which are the collapsed, burned-out remains of stars not massive enough to explode in supernovae. Our sun is such a star, and is destined to become a white dwarf in about five billion years. Because these white dwarfs are much denser than they were in their youth, they have stronger gravity and can produce higher-energy X-rays than normal. Another theory points to small black holes that slowly feed off their companion stars, radiating X-rays as material plummets down into their bottomless pits. Alternatively, the source of the high-energy X-rays might not be stellar corpses at all, astronomers say, but rather a diffuse haze of charged particles called cosmic rays. The cosmic rays might originate from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy as it devours material. When the cosmic rays interact with surrounding, dense gas, they emit X-rays. However, none of these theories match what is known from previous research, leaving the astronomers largely stumped. "This new result just reminds us that the galactic center is a bizarre place," said co-author Chuck Hailey of Columbia University. "In the same way people behave differently walking on the street instead of jammed on a crowded rush-hour subway, stellar objects exhibit weird behavior when crammed in close quarters near the supermassive black hole." The team says more observations are planned. Until then, theorists will be busy exploring the above scenarios or coming up with new models to explain what could be giving off the puzzling high-energy X-ray glow. "Every time that we build small telescopes like NuSTAR, which improve our view of the cosmos in a particular wavelength band, we can expect surprises like this," said Paul Hertz, the astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. More information is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/nustar

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Wins 2015 Webby Awards The websites and a mobile app selected for best-of-the-Web honors represent the diversity of NASA's online offerings. › Read the full story Deep Space Atomic Clock The Deep Space Atomic Clock mission will explore how to better navigate spacecraft and collect data with more precision. › Read the full story

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

Cast Your Vote in 'Bright Spot' Mystery

 

Cast Your Vote in 'Bright Spot' Mystery Can you guess what's creating those mysterious bright spots on Ceres? Cast your vote in the new poll from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that lets kids, adults, scientists – anyone! -- weigh in on what those spots could be. Vote at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/dawn/world_ceres/ On March 6, 2015, NASA's Dawn spacecraft began orbiting Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the first dwarf planet discovered. Even before the spacecraft arrived at its new solar system address, images revealed mysterious bright spots that captivated scientists and observers alike. Until Dawn gets a closer look over the next few months, it's anyone's guess what those spots could be. So, go ahead. Cast your vote, and see how it stacks up! For more information about the Dawn mission, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Soil Moisture Mission Produces First Global Maps NASA's new satellite mission to map the water in the soil under our feet has passed another key milestone by generating its first full global maps. › Read the full story Jason-3 Will Add to Record of the Sea's Rise and Fall Jason-3 will add to a 23-year data set used to study climate change and ocean cycles like El Nino, as well as for hurricane forecasts, navigation and other ocean needs. › Read the full story NASA RapidScat Proving Valuable for Tropical Cyclones Forecasters are already finding NASA's new ISS-RapidScat mission helpful as they keep watch on major storms around the globe. › Read the full story

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

NASA RapidScat Proving Valuable for Tropical Cyclones

LATEST NEWS NASA RapidScat Proving Valuable for Tropical Cyclones The ISS-RapidScat instrument has been in orbit seven months, and forecasters are already finding this new eye-in-the-sky helpful as they keep watch on major storms around the globe. RapidScat measures Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction over open waters. The instrument's data on ocean winds provide essential measurements for researchers and scientists to use in weather predictions, including hurricane monitoring. The NASA instrument arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 23, 2014, providing a new resource for tracking and studying storms ranging from tropical cyclones to nor'easters. RapidScat has kept busy in 2015's already active Southern Hemispheare hurricane season and the Northern Hemisphere's winter storm season. According to Bryan Stiles, lead for RapidScat science data processing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, "RapidScat data is now used by meteorological agencies around the world, including the U.S. Navy, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, among others," he said. "Wind data obtained by RapidScat have been used by NOAA to detect gale force and storm force conditions and issue warnings to shipping. The wind data is available to both forecasters and scientists. RapidScat data is used to support real-time weather prediction and to improve the models scientists use to predict both short-term weather and long-term climate trends." From the space station, this orbiting scatterometer instrument uses radar pulses reflected from the ocean's surface from different angles to measure ocean surface roughness, which is then used to determine surface wind speed and direction. This vantage point, combined with the fact that the space station orbits Earth every 90 minutes, also allows RapidScat to provide observations on how ocean winds vary over the course of the day. "Most Earth observing satellites are in polar, sun-synchronous orbits, meaning they observe the same locations at the same two local times of day with a regular repeating pattern," said Doug Tyler of the RapidScat team at JPL. "Because of the unique orbit of the space station, RapidScat observations occur at varying times of day with an irregular repeat period. RapidScat sometimes sees things several times in a row. The ISS orbit provided three overpasses of [Tropical Cyclone Nathan] in 23 hours, allowing RapidScat to capture changes in wind speed and direction as the storm developed." The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) forecasts tropical cyclones in several oceans and is also using ISS-RapidScat data. On March 15, 2015, at 0428 UTC, JTWC noted, "RapidScat showed that [Tropical Cyclone Nathan's] strongest winds (still assessed at 40 knots) remain in the northern periphery of the system, with significantly weaker winds in the southern portion." It's helpful to know where the strongest winds are in the system to enhance warnings, especially if they are affecting land or in a shipping channel. The same week, RapidScat provided surface wind data on the most powerful tropical cyclone to affect the Southern Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. After Tropical Cyclone Pam became an extra-tropical cyclone and moved near New Zealand, RapidScat continued to provide the location and speed of the strongest surface winds, which assisted with warnings. Earlier this year, RapidScat also provided wind data on a nor'easter that affected New England and triggered blizzard warnings on Jan. 27 and 28. The wind data captured on the intense system showed the strongest winds on the first day near 78 miles per hour (35 meters per second/126 kilometers per hour) as it moved along the coast, stretching from eastern Long Island, New York, to southern Nova Scotia, Canada. For more information on RapidScat, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/RapidScat/ and http://www.nasa.gov/rapidscat For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

May Educator Workshop: Robotics

 

JPL EDUCATION / WORKSHOPS Robotics Date: Saturday, May 9, 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Target Audience: Teachers for grades K-12 Location: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, von Karman Auditorium Overview: Whether it's roving around Mars, exploring asteroids and comets or investigating our home planet, we use robotics every day. Learn how JPL designs robots for various applications, and take a look at the important role these machines play in space exploration as well as other fields, like medicine. Learn about engineering design and create inexpensive activities that you can take back to your students to introduce them to the exciting world of robotics. Call the Educator Resource Center at (818) 393-5917 to reserve your spot. This free workshop is offered through the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, which provides formal and informal educators with NASA resources and materials that support STEM learning. For more information, visit the Educator Resource Center page at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115. For a list of more upcoming educator workshops from NASA/JPL Education, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=387

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW Ceres' Bright Spots Come Back Into View The two brightest spots on dwarf planet Ceres, which have fascinated scientists for months, are back in view in the newest images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Dawn took these images on April 14 and 15 from a vantage point 14,000 miles (22,000 kilometers) above Ceres' north pole. An animation and still image are available here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA19064 The images show the brightest spot and its companion clearly standing out against their darker surroundings, but their composition and sources are still un-known. Scientists also see other interesting features, including heavy cratering. As Dawn gets closer to Ceres, surface features will continue to emerge at in-creasingly better resolution. Dawn has now finished delivering the images that have helped mission planners maneuver the spacecraft to its first science orbit and prepare for subsequent ob-servations. All of the approach operations have executed flawlessly and kept Dawn on course and on schedule. Beginning April 23, Dawn will spend about three weeks in a near-circular orbit around Ceres, taking observations from 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) above the surface. On May 9, Dawn will begin to make its way to lower orbits to improve the view and provide higher-resolution observa-tions. "The approach imaging campaign has completed successfully by giving us a pre-liminary, tantalizing view of the world Dawn is about to start exploring in detail. It has allowed us to start asking some new and intriguing questions," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's mission director and chief engineer, based at NASA's Jet Pro-pulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. On March 6, Dawn became the first spacecraft to orbit a dwarf planet, and the first to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. Scientists will be comparing Ceres to giant asteroid Vesta, which Dawn studied from 2011 to 2012, in order to gain insights about the formation of our solar system. Both Vesta and Ceres, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, were on their way to becoming planets before their development was interrupted. Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is re-sponsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgements, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission For more information about Dawn, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Nominated for 2015 Best-of-the-Web Honors It's been called the "Internet's highest honor." Fans of NASA's online and mobile activities can vote now for their top picks in the annual contest that celebrates the best of the Web, social media, mobile and more. Among the nominees for the 19th annual Webby People's Voice Awards are four entries from NASA: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- Government nominee To vote: http://pv.webbyawards.com/2015/web/general-website/government NASA's Global Climate Change -- Science nominee and Green nominee To vote: http://pv.webbyawards.com/2015/web/general-website/science To vote: http://pv.webbyawards.com/2015/web/general-website/green NASA GeneLab -- Government nominee and Best navigation nominee To vote: http://pv.webbyawards.com/2015/web/general-website/government To vote: http://pv.webbyawards.com/2015/web/website-features-and-design/best-navigationstructure NASA's Earth Now mobile app -- Mobile Sites and Apps: Education and Reference nominee To vote: http://pv.webbyawards.com/2015/mobile-apps/handheld-devices/education-reference-handheld-devices Voting is open until 11:59 p.m. PDT on Thursday, April 23 (2:59 a.m. EDT on Friday, April 24). A program featuring the winners will be available from The Webbys on May 19. For this year, The Webby Awards received nearly 13,000 entries from all 50 U.S. states and more than 60 countries worldwide. About 1,000 nominees were selected from the entries and placed into dozens of categories for voting. NASA's main Web portal, www.nasa.gov, has been honored multiple times with the Webby People's Voice award for best government website (2002, 2003, 2009-2012, 2014). The site won the judges' Webby award in 2003 and 2012. For information about NASA and its programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW Dawn Glimpses Ceres' North Pole After spending more than a month in orbit on the dark side of dwarf planet Ceres, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has captured several views of the sunlit north pole of this intriguing world. These images were taken on April 10 from a distance of 21,000 miles (33,000 kilometers), and they represent the highest-resolution views of Ceres to date. An animated sequence of these images, and a still, are available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2015-133 Subsequent images of Ceres will show surface features at increasingly better resolution. Dawn arrived at Ceres on March 6, marking the first time a spacecraft has orbited a dwarf planet. Previously, the spacecraft explored giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months from 2011 to 2012. Dawn has the distinction of being the only spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. Ceres, with an average diameter of about 590 miles (950 kilometers), is the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn has been using its ion propulsion system to maneuver to its first science orbit at Ceres, which it will reach on April 23. The spacecraft will remain at a distance of 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) from the dwarf planet until May 9. Afterward, it will make its way to lower orbits. Dawn's mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgements, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission For more information about Dawn, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW Glitter Cloud May Serve As Space Mirror What does glitter have to do with finding stars and planets outside our solar system? Space telescopes may one day make use of glitter-like materials to help take images of new worlds, according to researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Standard telescopes use solid mirrors to image far-away objects. But the large, complex mirrors needed for astronomy can be quite expensive and difficult to construct. Their size and weight also add to the challenges of launching a space telescope in the first place. A concept called Orbiting Rainbows seeks to address these issues. Researchers propose using clouds of reflective glitter-like particles in place of mirrors to enable a telescope to view stars and exoplanets. The technology would enable high-resolution imaging at a fraction of the cost. "It's a floating cloud that acts as a mirror," said Marco Quadrelli from JPL, the Orbiting Rainbows principal investigator. "There is no backing structure, no steel around it, no hinges; just a cloud." In the proposed Orbiting Rainbows system, the small cloud of glitter-like grains would be trapped and manipulated with multiple laser beams. The trapping happens because of pressure from the laser light -- specifically, the momentum of photons translates into two forces: one that pushes particles away, and another that pushes the particles toward the axis of the light beam. The pressure of the laser light coming from different directions shapes the cloud and pushes the small grains to align in the same direction. In a space telescope, the tenuous cloud would be formed by millions of grains, each possibly as small as fractions of a millimeter in diameter. Such a telescope would have a wide adjustable aperture, the space through which light passes during an optical or photographic measurement; in fact, it might lead to possibly larger apertures than those of existing space telescopes. It would also be much simpler to package, transport and deploy, than a conventional space telescope. "You deploy the cloud, trap it and shape it," Quadrelli said. Nature is full of structures that have light-scattering and focusing properties, such as rainbows, optical phenomena in clouds, or comet tails. Observations of these phenomena, and recent laboratory successes in optical trapping and manipulation have contributed to the Orbiting Rainbows concept. The original idea for a telescope based on a laser-trapped mirror was proposed in a 1979 paper by astronomer Antoine Labeyrie at the College de France in Paris. Now, the Orbiting Rainbows team is trying to identify ways to manipulate and maintain the shape of an orbiting cloud of dust-like matter using laser pressure so it can function as an adaptive surface with useful electromagnetic characteristics, for instance, in the optical or radar bands. Because a cloud of glitter specks is not a smooth surface, the image produced from those specks in a telescope will be noisier -- with more speckled distortion -- than what a regular mirror would generate. That's why researchers are developing algorithms to take multiple images and computationally remove the speckle effect from the glitter. To test the idea, co-investigator Grover Swartzlander, an associate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and his students spread glitter on a concave lens in the laboratory. His team used lasers to represent the light from a double star system. They pointed the speckled mirror at the simulated stars, then used a camera to take pictures. With many exposures and lots of processing, an image of the two "stars" emerged using the glitter mirror. "This is a major achievement," Quadrelli said. "This demonstrates a highly controlled experiment in which we were able to do imaging in the visible light spectrum." The technology could be used more easily for radio-band signals. Because the wavelength is so much longer (about one centimeter, compared to nanometers in visible light), the mirror grains don't have to be as precisely controlled or aligned. This opens up Earth science applications such as earthquake detection and remote sensing of water and other phenomena. JPL's Darmindra Arumugam is investigating possible mechanisms for remote sensing with Orbiting Rainbows. The JPL optical design team, including Scott Basinger and Mayer Rud, has been working on the adaptive optics techniques that would be needed by an Orbiting Rainbows telescope. So far, the team has been exploring reflective, refractive and diffractive versions of a telescope based on Orbiting Rainbows, with maximum sensitivity to one specific frequency. Orbiting Rainbows has not yet been demonstrated in space. For a test in low-Earth orbit, the researchers would deploy a telescope with a small patch of particles, no larger than a bottle cap, to show that it can be trapped and shaped to reflect light. The next step would be to make many of these patches and synthesize an aperture with which to do imaging. The project represents a new application of "granular matter," materials such as dust grains, powders and aerosols. Such materials are very light, can be produced at low-cost and could be useful to the space exploration community. In this particular project, the "glitter" may be tiny granules of metallic-coated plastic, quartz or some other material. Orbiting Rainbows is currently in Phase II development through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program. It was one of five technology proposals chosen for continued study in 2014. In the current phase, Orbiting Rainbows researchers are conducting small-scale ground experiments to demonstrate how granular materials can be manipulated using lasers and simulations of how the imaging system would behave in orbit. NIAC is a program of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, located at the agency's headquarters in Washington. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology for NASA. For a complete list of the selected proposals and more information about NIAC, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/niac For more information about the Space Technology Mission Directorate, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA's Spitzer Spots Planet Deep Within Our Galaxy NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has teamed up with a telescope on the ground to find a remote gas planet about 13,000 light-years away, making it one of the most distant planets known. › Read the full story Icy Tendrils Reaching into Saturn Ring Traced to Their Source Long, sinuous, tendril-like structures seen near Enceladus originate directly from its geysers, according to scientists studying images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. › Read the full story NASA Celebrates Earth Day with Public Events, Online Activities NASA will celebrate the 45th annual Earth Day April 17-22 with a variety of live and online activities to engage the public in the agency's mission to better understand and protect our home planet. › Read the full story

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA-funded Study Explains Saturn's Epic Tantrums The long-standing mystery of why Saturn seethes with enormous storms every 30 years may have been solved by scientists working with data from NASA's Cassini mission. › Read the full story Dawn's Ceres Color Map Reveals Surface Diversity A new color map of dwarf planet Ceres, which NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting since March, reveals the diversity of the surface of this planetary body. › Read the full story NASA Mars Rover's Weather Data Bolster Case for Brine Martian weather and soil conditions that NASA's Curiosity rover has measured, together with a type of salt found in Martian soil, could put liquid brine in the soil at night. › Read the full story

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW Researchers Test Smartphones for Earthquake Warning Crowdsourced Smartphone Data Could Give Advance Notice for People in Quake Zones Smartphones and other personal electronic devices could, in regions where they are in widespread use, function as early warning systems for large earthquakes, according to newly reported research. This technology could serve regions of the world that cannot afford higher quality, but more expensive, conventional earthquake early warning systems, or could contribute to those systems. The study, led by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), found that the sensors in smartphones and similar devices could be used to build earthquake warning systems. Despite being less accurate than scientific-grade equipment, the GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers in a smartphone can detect the permanent ground movement (displacement) caused by fault motion in a large earthquake. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, was a participant in the study, published April 10 in the new journal Science Advances from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Using crowdsourced observations from participating users' smartphones, scientists could detect and analyze earthquakes, and transmit customized earthquake warnings back to them and other users. "Crowdsourced alerting means that the community will benefit by data generated by the community," said Sarah Minson, USGS geophysicist and lead author of the study. Minson was a post-doctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena while working on this study. Earthquake early warning systems detect the start of an earthquake and rapidly transmit warnings to people and automated systems before they experience shaking at their location. While much of the world's population is susceptible to damaging earthquakes, the systems are currently operating in only a few regions around the globe, including Japan and Mexico. "Most of the world does not receive earthquake warnings mainly due to the cost of building the necessary scientific monitoring networks," said USGS geophysicist and project lead Benjamin Brooks. Researchers tested the feasibility of crowdsourced earthquake early warning systems with a simulation of a hypothetical magnitude 7 quake, and with real data from the 2011 magnitude 9 Tohoku-oki, Japan, earthquake. The results show that crowdsourced warning systems could be achieved with only a tiny percentage of people in a given area contributing information from their smartphones. For example, if phones from fewer than 5,000 people in a large metropolitan area responded, the earthquake could be detected and analyzed fast enough to issue a warning to areas farther away before the onset of strong shaking. "The speed of an electronic warning travels faster than the earthquake shaking does," explained Craig Glennie, a report author and professor at the University of Houston in Texas. The authors found that the sensors in smartphones and similar devices could be used to issue warnings for earthquakes of approximately magnitude 7 or larger, but not for smaller, yet potentially damaging earthquakes. Comprehensive EEW requires a dense network of scientific instruments. Scientific-grade EEW, such as the USGS's ShakeAlert system that is currently being implemented on the U.S. West Coast, will be able to help minimize the impact of earthquakes over a wide range of magnitudes. However, in many parts of the world where there are insufficient resources to build and maintain scientific networks, but consumer electronics are increasingly common, crowdsourced EEW has significant potential. "The U.S. earthquake early warning system is being built on our high-quality scientific earthquake networks, but crowdsourced approaches can augment our system and have real potential to make warnings possible in places that don't have high-quality networks," said Douglas Given, USGS coordinator of the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System. The U.S. Agency for International Development has already agreed to fund a pilot project, in collaboration with the Chilean Centro Sismologico Nacional, to test a pilot hybrid earthquake warning system using both stand-alone smartphone sensors and scientific-grade sensors along the Chilean coast. "Crowdsourced data are less precise, but for larger earthquakes that cause large shifts in the ground surface, they contain enough information to detect that an earthquake has occurred, information necessary for early warning," said study co-author Susan Owen of JPL. "The use of mobile phone fleets as a distributed sensor network -- and the statistical insight that many imprecise instruments can contribute to the creation of more precise measurements -- has broad applicability including great potential to benefit communities where there isn't an existing network of scientific instruments," said Bob Iannucci of Carnegie Mellon University's Silicon Valley campus, Moffett Field, California. "Thirty years ago, it took months to assemble a crude picture of the deformations from an earthquake. This new technology promises to provide a near-instantaneous picture with much greater resolution," said Thomas Heaton, a coauthor of the study and professor of engineering seismology at Caltech. This research was a collaboration among scientists from the USGS, Caltech, the University of Houston, JPL and Carnegie Mellon University-Silicon Valley, and included support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information, visit: http://www.usgs.gov

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW NASA/Forest Service Maps Aid Fire Recovery Fast Facts: › New maps of burn areas from two California megafires are so detailed, they can show individual trees. › The maps are being used in rehabilitating the burn areas and protecting wildlife. New maps of two recent California megafires that combine unique data sets from the U.S. Forest Service and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are answering some of the urgent questions that follow a huge wildfire: In all the acres of blackened landscape, where are the live trees to provide seed and regrow the forest? Which dead trees could endanger workers rebuilding roads and trails? What habitats have been created for fire-dependent wildlife species? The maps, so detailed that they show individual trees, cover the areas of two California megafires -- the 2013 Rim fire, which burned more than 250,000 acres (1,000 square kilometers) near and in Yosemite National Park, and 2014's very intense King fire near Lake Tahoe -- before, during and after the active burns. As the Forest Service directs ongoing recovery and restoration projects in the two areas, it is using the maps to target its efforts toward important goals such as reducing soil erosion and protecting wildlife. The maps include observations from three instruments: JPL's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), which collects images in visible light; JPL's MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER), which observes in thermal infrared -- in other words, it "sees" heat; and lidar data showing terrain and canopy with such high resolution that individual trees are outlined. Carlos Ramirez, program manager of the USFS's Remote Sensing Laboratory, McClellan, California, described three ways the Forest Service is currently using the maps: -- "In some areas of the King fire, you don't see any green for miles and miles," said Ramirez. "It's likely there are not going to be any viable seed sources where the fire was that intense. With the AVIRIS data set, we get an inventory of living vegetation and the condition of it. That gives people in charge of putting together restoration plans an idea of where to focus their attention." -- Wildfires increase erosion by burning off plants that stabilize soil and diffuse rain. Intense burns often create a water-resistant layer atop the soil so that rain runs off instead of soaking in, cutting deep channels and increasing flood and landslide danger downstream. The maps identify where trees and plants are still alive and erosion control is not needed. -- Ramirez is working with the University of California, Davis, and nongovernmental organizations to manage the goals of simultaneously clearing hazardous burned timber and preserving habitats for as many species as possible. "Some of these high-severity burn patches are highly desirable habitats," he said. The maps allow the team to better assess habitat quality for species such as the black-backed woodpecker, which thrives on beetles that live in dead trees. The NASA observations were acquired in the development of a satellite mission called the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI), which will study Earth's ecosystems and provide critical information on natural disasters. HyspIRI is many years from launch and not yet under construction, but AVIRIS and MASTER are airborne prototypes of its two instruments, developed so that scientists can work out scientific and technological issues in advance. Natasha Stavros of JPL recognized the potential value of the Rim fire observations and began collaborating with Ramirez to assemble the maps. When the King fire broke out, the scientists received additional NASA funding to document that fire and its aftermath as well. They hope to create another set of maps if another California megafire breaks out in 2015. Scientist Janice Coen of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, is using the MASTER maps of the King fire in independent research with the Coupled Atmosphere - Wildland Fire Environment model, which simulates the interactions of weather and fires. She hopes to gain insight into why the fire grew so quickly. Fires that intense usually are fanned by high winds, but weather stations around the King fire recorded very little wind when it started. "If you're using the standard tools, you can't explain the rapid fire growth," she said. "The evolution of this fire seems to depend very much on winds the fire itself generated as it burned, and those winds in turn depend on the characteristics of the vegetation the fire had for fuel. It's a good case study, because the new data sets can distinguish between vegetation characteristics that other data sets don't distinguish." A database of detailed maps is online at: http://wildfire.jpl.nasa.gov/data

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription

JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW Heat-Converting Material Patents Licensed NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, has licensed patents on high-temperature thermoelectric materials to Evident Technologies, Troy, New York, which provides these kinds of materials and related power systems. Thermoelectric materials convert heat into electricity. For example, by using this technology, waste-heat from a car could potentially be fed back into the vehicle and used to generate electricity. This would increase efficiency and deliver low-cost solutions for harvesting waste heat. "The licensed technology could be applied to convert heat into electricity in a number of waste heat recovery applications, including automobile exhaust and high-temperature industrial processes such as ceramic and glass processing plants," said Thierry Caillat, task leader for the thermoelectrics team at JPL. JPL has a long history of high-temperature thermoelectric development driven by the need for space mission power in the absence of sunlight. Many space probes that leave Earth's orbit use thermoelectrics as their electrical power source. NASA's Voyager 1 (the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space) and Voyager 2 are still traveling away from the sun using thermoelectric power systems, more than 35 years after their launches. Both of these spacecraft use radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), systems that convert heat from a radioactive decay process into electricity. NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, the largest vehicle to ever land and operate on Mars, also relies on a similar system for power. On Earth, Evident Technologies will use technological advances from JPL in this area to develop commercial, high-temperature thermoelectric modules for terrestrial applications. "We feel that there is an unmet need for customers who want to convert high-temperature heat into electricity" said Clint Ballinger, CEO of Evident Technologies, "We are excited to capitalize on these NASA advances and plan to launch commercial products very soon." Currently there are no commercially available products that use this NASA-developed technology. Evident plans to launch product based on this technology within the next three months. Evident Thermoelectrics provides thermoelectric solutions for power generation. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology for NASA.

 

This message was sent to chantybanty1.chanti@blogger.com from: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, jplnewsroom@jpl.nasa.gov, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory | 4800 Oak Grove Dr | Pasadena, CA 91109

Manage Your Subscription