JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW New NASA Instrument Brings Coasts and Coral into Focus A coastal scene with deep blue seas and a coral reef is beautiful to look at, but if you try to record the scene with a camera or a scientific instrument, the results are almost always disappointing. Most cameras can't "see" underwater objects in such scenes because they're so dim and wash out the glaring seashore. These problems don't just ruin vacation photos. They're a serious hindrance for scientists who need images of the coastline to study how these ecosystems are being affected by climate change, development and other hazards. To the rescue: the new Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer, created at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. PRISM is an airborne instrument designed to observe hard-to-see coastal water phenomena. In NASA's upcoming Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) field experiment, PRISM will observe entire reef ecosystems in more of the world's reef area - hundreds of times more -- than has ever been observed before. "Coastal ocean science has specific requirements that had not been met with other instruments" when PRISM was initially proposed, said Pantazis Mouroulis of JPL, who designed the instrument. "At that time, it was not even known whether anyone could design an instrument with those characteristics. We had to devise new techniques for assembling and aligning the instrument, and even new technologies for the components." With devastating coral bleaching taking place around the world, a sensor that can collect a detailed, uniform, large-scale dataset on coral reefs could hardly be more timely. "The value of doing this investigation right now is unimaginable because of the speed at which the environment is changing, and PRISM is the perfect instrument at the perfect time," said JPL's David Thompson, who is designing a computer model to use with PRISM's measurements for CORAL. "It's such a sensitive instrument -- beyond anything I've worked with before." How it works PRISM is a spectrometer, an instrument that splits light into its spectrum of wavelengths and measures the intensity of the light at each individual wavelength. Every type of molecule absorbs a unique combination of wavelengths, leaving dark gaps in the spectrum of light. The pattern of gaps is a sort of spectral "bar code" for that molecule. Spectrometers collect light and record these spectral patterns in it. PRISM's spectrometer collects spectra in the visible, ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths, which encompass the "bar codes" for most phenomena of interest along coastlines. Because it is an airborne instrument, PRISM can measure wide swaths of coastline repeatedly in a short period of time -- important when monitoring rapidly changing conditions such as rising floodwaters -- and it creates a dataset on a regional scale, but with an amount of detail approaching what can be collected by boat-based campaigns. Boat campaigns can only produce local-scale datasets, because they are so expensive and labor intensive. PRISM measures all spectra in the entire scene below its airborne perch. Each airborne campaign that uses the instrument can select just the spectra it needs for its area of study. For the CORAL campaign, "We're after that fraction of light that makes it all the way to the bottom of the ocean and comes back to the sensor, which carries the signal of the health of the coral reef," said Thompson. Thompson designed his computer algorithms to eliminate the unneeded light and isolate just the seafloor spectra. "You can think of it as peeling back the layers of an onion," he said. "Atmospheric haze is different from the surface glint off the ocean, which is different from light that's gone partway down into the ocean, which is different from light that's gone all the way down [to the seafloor and back]. All those other optical paths have to be eliminated in our modeling." To test Thompson's model, the light from each "onion layer" is compared against measurements of the same thing -- the amount of atmospheric haze and the light-changing properties of the ocean water, for example -- taken aboard boats at a few points along the plane's path at the same time the instrument flies overhead. "It's critical for the math [in the model] to be tied down at different points with actual, physical measurements," Thompson said. When a shipboard measurement of the water's murkiness agrees with the model's calculation of the same thing, for example, it gives confidence that the model is correctly interpreting the spectra collected by PRISM. How it's working Heidi Dierssen, an oceanographer and professor at the University of Connecticut, Groton, and co-investigator in the CORAL campaign, worked on the development of PRISM and took the instrument on its first field campaign to study eelgrass in California's coastal waters. Dierssen has used many different instruments to gather coastal data in the past. When she used sensors that were optimized for land to observe the ocean, "They failed to give us good signals," she said. "When you looked at a spectrum it was often wavy, and you had to spend a lot of effort to calibrate it to what you measured in the water." When she used PRISM, "I was shocked," she said. "The first time we collected imagery, we got very good agreement with the field data. That instrument is truly a leap forward." CORAL's project scientist, Michelle Gierach of JPL, has seen PRISM's data from Dierssen's study and used the instrument to observe ocean color (which can indicate phytoplankton presence) in the sea around Antarctica last winter. "We have only begun to scratch the surface of what PRISM is capable of doing, from eelgrass to biology within the Southern Ocean to now assessing coral reefs throughout the western tropical Pacific," she said. "Those are just some of the things that PRISM has in its arsenal. There's so much more that is possible." NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA uses airborne and ground-based instruments to develop new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing. For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA's Juno Spacecraft Crosses Jupiter/Sun Gravitational Boundary Since its launch five years ago, there have been three forces tugging at NASA's Juno spacecraft as it speeds through the solar system. The sun, Earth and Jupiter have all been influential -- a gravitational trifecta of sorts. At times, Earth was close enough to be the frontrunner. More recently, the sun has had the most clout when it comes to Juno's trajectory. Today, it can be reported that Jupiter is now in the gravitational driver's seat, and the basketball court-sized spacecraft is not looking back. "Today the gravitational influence of Jupiter is neck and neck with that of the sun," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "As of tomorrow, and for the rest of the mission, we project Jupiter's gravity will dominate as the trajectory-perturbing effects by other celestial bodies are reduced to insignificant roles." Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011. On July 4 of this year, it will perform a Jupiter orbit insertion maneuver -- a 35-minute burn of its main engine, which will impart a mean change in velocity of 1,212 mph (542 meters per second) on the spacecraft. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will circle the Jovian world 37 times, skimming to within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops. During the flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The mythical god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife -- the goddess Juno -- was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Juno visit these sites: http://www.nasa.gov/juno http://missionjuno.swri.edu

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Radar Finds Ice Age Record in Mars' Polar Cap Scientists using radar data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have found a record of the most recent Martian ice age recorded in the planet's north polar ice cap. The new results agree with previous models that indicate a glacial period ended about 400,000 years ago, as well as predictions about how much ice would have been accumulated at the poles since then. The results, published in the May 27 issue of the journal Science, help refine models of the Red Planet's past and future climate by allowing scientists to determine how ice moves between the poles and mid-latitudes, and in what volumes. Mars has bright polar caps of ice that are easily visible from telescopes on Earth. A seasonal cover of carbon-dioxide ice and snow is observed to advance and retreat over the poles during the Martian year. During summertime in the planet's north, the remaining northern polar cap is all water ice; the southern cap is water ice as well, but remains covered by a relatively thin layer of carbon dioxide ice even in southern summertime. But Mars also undergoes variations in its tilt and the shape of its orbit over hundreds of thousands of years. These changes cause substantial shifts in the planet's climate, including ice ages. Earth has similar, but less variable, phases called Milankovitch cycles. Scientists use data from MRO's Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARAD) to produce images called radargrams that are like vertical slices though the layers of ice and dust that comprise the Martian polar ice deposits. For the new study, researchers analyzed hundreds of such images to look for variations in the layer properties. The researchers identified a boundary in the ice that extends across the entire north polar cap. Above the boundary, the layers accumulated very quickly and uniformly, compared with the layers below them. "The layers in the upper few hundred meters display features that indicate a period of erosion, followed by a period of rapid accumulation that is still occurring today," said planetary scientist Isaac Smith, the study's lead author. Smith led the work while at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, but is now at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. On Earth, ice ages take hold when the polar regions and high latitudes become cooler than average for thousands of years, causing glaciers to grow toward the mid-latitudes. In contrast, the Martian variety occurs when -- as a result of the planet's increased tilt -- its poles become warmer than lower latitudes. During these periods, the polar caps retreat and water vapor migrates toward the equator, forming ground ice and glaciers at mid-latitudes. As the warm polar period ends, polar ice begins accumulating again, while ice is lost from mid-latitudes. This retreat and regrowth of polar ice is exactly what Smith and colleagues see in the record revealed by the SHARAD radar images. An increase in polar ice following a mid-latitude ice age is also expected from climate models that show how ice moves around based on Mars' orbital properties, especially its tilt. These models predict the last Martian ice age ended about 400,000 years ago, as the poles began to cool relative to the equator. Models suggest that since then, the polar deposits would have thickened by about 980 feet (300 meters). The upper unit identified by Smith and colleagues reaches a maximum thickness of 1,050 feet (320 meters) across the polar cap, which is equivalent to a 2-foot-thick (60-centimeter-thick) global layer of ice. That is essentially the same as model predictions made by other researchers in 2003 and 2007. "This suggests that we have indeed identified the record of the most recent Martian glacial period and the regrowth of the polar ice since then. Using these measurements, we can improve our understanding of how much water is moving between the poles and other latitudes, helping to improve our understanding of the Martian climate," Smith said. After 10 years in orbit, Mars Reconnaissance and its six science instruments are still in excellent shape. "The longevity of the mission has enabled more thorough and improved radar coverage of the Martian poles," said Richard Zurek, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Our long life in orbit and powerful 3-D analysis tools are allowing scientists to unravel Mars' past climate history." The Italian Space Agency provided the SHARAD instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Sapienza University of Rome leads its operations. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver built the orbiter and supports its operations.

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Telescopes Find Clues For How Giant Black Holes Formed So Quickly Using data from NASA's Great Observatories, astronomers have found the best evidence yet for cosmic seeds in the early universe that should grow into supermassive black holes. Researchers combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope to identify these possible black hole seeds. They discuss their findings in a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Our discovery, if confirmed, explains how these monster black holes were born," said Fabio Pacucci of Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) in Pisa, Italy, who led the study. "We found evidence that supermassive black hole seeds can form directly from the collapse of a giant gas cloud, skipping any intermediate steps." Scientists believe a supermassive black hole lies in the center of nearly all large galaxies, including our own Milky Way. They have found that some of these supermassive black holes, which contain millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun, formed less than a billion years after the start of the universe in the Big Bang. One theory suggests black hole seeds were built up by pulling in gas from their surroundings and by mergers of smaller black holes, a process that should take much longer than found for these quickly forming black holes. These new findings suggest instead that some of the first black holes formed directly when a cloud of gas collapsed, bypassing any other intermediate phases, such as the formation and subsequent destruction of a massive star. "There is a lot of controversy over which path these black holes take," said co-author Andrea Ferrara, also of SNS. "Our work suggests we are narrowing in on an answer, where the black holes start big and grow at the normal rate, rather than starting small and growing at a very fast rate." The researchers used computer models of black hole seeds combined with a new method to select candidates for these objects from long-exposure images from Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer. The team found two strong candidates for black hole seeds. Both of these matched the theoretical profile in the infrared data, including being very red objects, and they also emit X-rays detected with Chandra. Estimates of their distance suggest they may have been formed when the universe was less than a billion years old "Black hole seeds are extremely hard to find and confirming their detection is very difficult," said Andrea Grazian, a co-author from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy. "However, we think our research has uncovered the two best candidates to date." The team plans to obtain further observations in X-rays and infrared to check whether these objects have more of the properties expected for black hole seeds. Upcoming observatories, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, will aid in future studies by detecting the light from more distant and smaller black holes. Scientists currently are building the theoretical framework needed to interpret the upcoming data, with the aim of finding the first black holes in the universe. "As scientists, we cannot say at this point that our model is 'the one'," said Pacucci. "What we really believe is that our model is able to reproduce the observations without requiring unreasonable assumptions." NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program while the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission, whose science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. For more on NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra For more on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble For more on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW Study Helps Explain Sea Ice Differences at Earth's Poles Why has the sea ice cover surrounding Antarctica been increasing slightly, in sharp contrast to the drastic loss of sea ice occurring in the Arctic Ocean? A new NASA-led study finds the geology of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are responsible. A NASA/NOAA/university team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, used satellite radar, sea surface temperature, land form and bathymetry (ocean depth) data to study the physical processes and properties affecting Antarctic sea ice. They found that two persistent geological factors -- the topography of Antarctica and the depth of the ocean surrounding it -- are influencing winds and ocean currents, respectively, to drive the formation and evolution of Antarctica's sea ice cover and help sustain it. "Our study provides strong evidence that the behavior of Antarctic sea ice is entirely consistent with the geophysical characteristics found in the southern polar region, which differ sharply from those present in the Arctic," said Nghiem. Antarctic sea ice cover is dominated by first-year (seasonal) sea ice. Each year, the sea ice reaches its maximum extent around the frozen continent in September and retreats to about 17 percent of that extent in February. Since the late 1970s, its extent has been relatively stable, increasing just slightly; however, regional differences are observed. Over the years, scientists have floated various hypotheses to explain the behavior of Antarctic sea ice, particularly in light of observed global temperature increases. Are changes in the ozone hole involved? Could fresh meltwater from Antarctic ice shelves be making the ocean surface less salty and more conducive to ice formation, since salt inhibits freezing? Are increases in the strength of Antarctic winds causing the ice to thicken? Something is protecting Antarctic sea ice, but a definitive answer has remained elusive. To tackle this cryospheric conundrum, Nghiem and his team adopted a novel approach. They analyzed radar data from NASA's QuikScat satellite from 1999 to 2009 to trace the paths of Antarctic sea ice movements and map its different types. They focused on the 2008 growth season, a year of exceptional seasonal variability in Antarctic sea ice coverage. Their analyses revealed that as sea ice forms and builds up early in the sea ice growth season, it gets pushed offshore and northward by winds, forming a protective shield of older, thicker ice that circulates around the continent. The persistent winds, which flow downslope off the continent and are shaped by Antarctica's topography, pile ice up against the massive ice shield, enhancing its thickness. This band of ice, which varies in width from roughly 62 to 620 miles (100 to 1,000 kilometers), encapsulates and protects younger, thinner ice in the ice pack behind it from being reduced by winds and waves. The team also used QuikScat radar data to classify the different types of Antarctic sea ice. Older, thicker sea ice returns a stronger radar signal than younger, thinner ice does. They found the sea ice within the protective shield was older and rougher (due to longer exposure to wind and waves), and thicker (due to more ice growth and snow accumulation). As the sea ice cover expands and ice drifts away from the continent, areas of open water form behind it on the sea surface, creating "ice factories" conducive to rapid sea ice growth. To address the question of how the Southern Ocean maintains this great sea ice shield, the team combined sea surface temperature data from multiple satellites with a recently available bathymetric chart of the depth of the world's oceans. Sea surface temperature data reveal that at the peak of ice growth season, the boundary of the ice shield remains behind a 30-degree Fahrenheit (-1 degree Celsius) temperature line surrounding Antarctica. This temperature line corresponds with the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current front, a boundary that separates the circulation of cold and warm waters around Antarctica. The team theorized that the location of this front follows the underwater bathymetry. When they plotted the bathymetric data against the ocean temperatures, the pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Pronounced seafloor features strongly guide the ocean current and correspond closely with observed regional Antarctic sea ice patterns. For example, the current stays near Bouvet Island, located 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the nearest land, where three tectonic plates join to form seafloor ridges. Off the coast of East Antarctica, the -1 degree Celsius sea surface temperature lines closely bundle together as they cross the Kerguelen Plateau (a submerged microcontinent that broke out of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent), through a deep channel called the Fawn Trough. But those lines spread apart over adjacent deep ocean basins, where seafloor features are not pronounced. Off the West Antarctica coast, the deep, smooth seafloor loses its grip over the current, allowing sea ice extent to decrease and resulting in large year-to-year variations. Study results are published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. Other participating institutions include the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering at UCLA; the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle; and the U.S. National/Naval Ice Center, NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland. Additional funding was provided by the National Science Foundation. NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing. QuikScat was built and is managed by JPL. For more information, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/quikscat/ For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth

 

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Teachable Moment! Navigating LA with 65,000 Pounds of NASA Space Shuttle History

 

Navigating Los Angeles with 65,000 Pounds of NASA Space Shuttle History History is being made this weekend as the last-existing, flight-qualified external fuel tank for NASA's Space Shuttle Program makes a 16.5-mile crawl through the streets of Los Angeles to its new home at the California Science Center. On Saturday, May 21, the tank, a nearly 154-foot long, more than 65,000-pound behemoth dubbed ET-94, will be towed from the port in Marina del Rey to the science center. Eventually, it will be displayed with the space shuttle Endeavour and two solid rocket boosters in launch configuration – looking like it's ready to blast into space! In our latest Teachable Moment, education specialist Ota Lutz explains some of the fascinating history behind the the external tanks – and ET-94 specifically – and discusses the engineering challenge of transporting a giant fuel tank through city streets. Then, she demonstrates how to turn the historic event into a math lesson for students that addresses both Next Generation Science and Common Core Math Standards for grades 2-12.

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW Europa's Ocean May Have An Earthlike Chemical Balance A NASA modeling study suggests the necessary balance of chemical energy for life could exist in the ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa, even without volcanic hydrothermal activity. › Read the full story Kepler-223 System: Clues to Planetary Migration A new study finds a solar system whose planets may resemble the ancient configuration of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. › Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW New Study Maps Rate of New Orleans Sinking Fast Facts: › Highest-resolution study to date of ground sinking in and around New Orleans. › NASA airborne radar was able to detect sinking or deformation even in single structures › Results can help decision makers more effectively address and reverse the effects of sinking and improve public safety. New Orleans and surrounding areas continue to sink at highly variable rates due to a combination of natural geologic and human-induced processes, finds a new NASA/university study using NASA airborne radar. The observed rates of sinking, otherwise known as subsidence, were generally consistent with, but somewhat higher than, previous studies conducted using different radar data. The research was the most spatially-extensive, high-resolution study to date of regional subsidence in and around New Orleans, measuring its effects and examining its causes. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; UCLA; and the Center for GeoInformatics at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, collaborated on the study, which covered the period from June 2009 to July 2012. The highest rates of sinking were observed upriver along the Mississippi River around major industrial areas in Norco, and in Michoud, with up to 2 inches (50 millimeters) a year of sinking. The team also observed notable subsidence in New Orleans' Upper and Lower 9th Ward, and in Metairie, where the measured ground movement could be related to water levels in the Mississippi. At the Bonnet Carré Spillway east of Norco -- New Orleans' last line of protection against springtime river floods overtopping the levees -- research showed up to 1.6 inches (40 millimeters) a year of sinking behind the structure and up to 1.6 inches (40 millimeters) a year at nearby industrial facilities. While the study cites many contributing factors for the regional subsidence, the primary contributors were found to be groundwater pumping and dewatering (surface water pumping to lower the water table, which prevents standing water and soggy ground). JPL scientist and lead author Cathleen Jones said study results will be used to improve models of subsidence for the Mississippi River Delta that decision makers use to inform planning. "Agencies can use these data to more effectively implement actions to remediate and reverse the effects of subsidence, improving the long-term coastal resiliency and sustainability of New Orleans," Jones said. "The more recent land elevation change rates from this study will be used to inform flood modeling and response strategies, improving public safety." Subsidence on the Gulf Coast: Old Problem, New Challenges Around the world, the loss of delta lands due to subsidence and associated increases in flood risk are major issues facing coastal communities, especially in the face of ongoing and possibly accelerating global sea level rise. The Mississippi River delta is losing its natural coastal barriers -- the delta wetlands and barrier islands -- increasing flood risk across the area. In response, the region has increased investment in infrastructure and restoration activities to protect human populations and areas of high economic value. The landscape of Southeast Louisiana was built upon a coastal delta created by the Mississippi River during the past 8,000 years as sea level rise due to glacial melting in the last ice age slowed. Before humans intervened, natural subsidence was offset by a combination of sediments deposited during Mississippi River floods and organic soil produced from the decay of wetland vegetation. Construction of flood control levees to protect the Gulf Coast economy and local populations interrupted the sediment supply, leading to a net increase in land subsidence. In Greater New Orleans, local geology plays a major role in flooding and subsidence. The city lies along the current path of the Mississippi River and is built on modern and past natural levees and buried or artificially drained swamps and marshes. It is located in an area that has received sediments from multiple lobes of the Mississippi River delta over time. To fully and accurately measure and predict future subsidence in and around New Orleans, it's necessary to better understand the various natural and human-produced processes contributing to the sinking. Those include withdrawal of water, oil and gas; compaction of shallow sediments; faulting; sinking of Earth's crust from the weight of deposited sediments; and ongoing vertical movement of land covered by glaciers during the last ice age. Jones said the comprehensive subsidence maps produced by this study, with their improved spatial resolution, help scientists differentiate these processes. The maps were created using data from NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), which uses a technique known as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). InSAR compares radar images of Earth's surface over time to map surface deformation with centimeter-scale precision. It measures total surface elevation changes from all sources -- human and natural, deep seated and shallow. Its data must be carefully interpreted to disentangle these phenomena, which operate at different time and space scales. UAVSAR's spatial resolution makes it ideal for measuring subsidence in New Orleans, where human-produced subsidence can be large and is often localized. Jones said another key advantage of this study is that UAVSAR enabled better resolution of small-scale features than previous studies. "We were able to identify single structures or clusters of structures subsiding or deforming relative to the surrounding area," she said. In addition to the UAVSAR data, researchers from the Center for GeoInformatics (C4G) at Louisiana State University provided up-to-date GPS positioning information for industrial and urban locations within southeast Louisiana. This information helped establish the rate of ground movement at these specific points. C4G maintains the most comprehensive network of GPS reference stations in the state. The Louisiana network consists of more than 50 Continuously Operating Reference Stations, or CORS sites, which acquire the horizontal and vertical coordinates at each station every second of every day. The CORS sites are part of the National Geodetic Survey network. CORS data pin InSAR data down to specific, local points on Earth. The LSU research team derived the positional time series using precise point positioning software developed by JPL. "We define all the parameters to reduce the ambiguities. This enables us to distill a location down to millimeter-level precision," said Joshua Kent, Geographic Information System manager at C4G. "A wide range of people rely on the CORS data, from geoscientists to surveyors, engineers and farmers." The study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing. UAVSAR was developed and is managed by JPL and flies on a C-20A research aircraft based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center facility in Palmdale, California. Developed to test new technologies and study Earth surface dynamics, UAVSAR data are informing the design and planning for a future spaceborne radar mission, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), which is planned to image Earth's surface at least once every 12 days. For more information on UAVSAR, visit: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/ For more information on NISAR, visit: http://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/ For more information on NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW 2007 OR10: Largest Unnamed World in the Solar System New results from NASA's Kepler/K2 mission reveal the largest unnamed body in our solar system and the third largest of the current roster of dwarf planets. › Read the full story Second Cycle of Martian Seasons Completing for Curiosity Rover NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has completed its second Martian year since landing in 2012, recording environmental patterns through two full cycles of Martian seasons. › Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA's Kepler Mission Announces Largest Collection of Planets Ever Discovered NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets -- the single largest finding of planets to date. "This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth." Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope's July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent - the minimum required to earn the status of "planet." An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates that have previously been verified by other techniques. "Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars," said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. "This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe." Kepler captures the discrete signals of distant planets - decreases in brightness that occur when planets pass in front of, or transit, their stars - much like the May 9 Mercury transit of our sun. Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system more than two decades ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, one-by-one process of verifying suspected planets. This latest announcement, however, is based on a statistical analysis method that can be applied to many planet candidates simultaneously. Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey and lead author of the scientific paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, employed a technique to assign each Kepler candidate a planet-hood probability percentage - the first such automated computation on this scale, as previous statistical techniques focused only on sub-groups within the greater list of planet candidates identified by Kepler. "Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs," said Morton. "If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you're going to need a broom. This statistical analysis is our broom." In the newly validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth based on size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets are now known to be members of this exclusive group. "They say not to count our chickens before they're hatched, but that's exactly what these results allow us to do based on probabilities that each egg (candidate) will hatch into a chick (bona fide planet)," said Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets -- a number that's needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds." Of the nearly 5,000 total planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler. Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. For four years, Kepler monitored 150,000 stars in a single patch of sky, measuring the tiny, telltale dip in the brightness of a star that can be produced by a transiting planet. In 2018, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will use the same method to monitor 200,000 bright nearby stars and search for planets, focusing on Earth and Super-Earth-sized. Ames manages the Kepler missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system, with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler For briefing materials from Tuesday's media teleconference where the new group of planets was announced, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510

 

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