JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW From Monterey Bay to Europa If you think operating a robot in space is hard, try doing it in the ocean. Saltwater can corrode your robot and block its radio signals. Kelp forests can tangle it up, and you might not get it back. Sharks will even try to take bites out of its wings. The ocean is basically a big obstacle course of robot death. Despite this, robotic submersibles have become critical tools for ocean research. While satellites can study the ocean surface, their signals can't penetrate the water. A better way to study what's below is to look beneath yourself -- or send a robot in your place. That's why a team of researchers from NASA and other institutions recently visited choppy waters in Monterey Bay, California. Their ongoing research is developing artificial intelligence for submersibles, helping them track signs of life below the waves. Doing so won't just benefit our understanding of Earth's marine environments; the team hopes this artificial intelligence will someday be used to explore the icy oceans believed to exist on moons like Europa. If confirmed, these oceans are thought to be some of the most likely places to host life in the outer solar system. A fleet of six coordinated drones was used to study Monterey Bay. The fleet roved for miles seeking out changes in temperature and salinity. To plot their routes, forecasts of these ocean features were sent to the drones from shore. The drones also sensed how the ocean actively changed around them. A major goal for the research team is to develop artificial intelligence that seamlessly integrates both kinds of data. "Autonomous drones are important for ocean research, but today's drones don't make decisions on the fly," said Steve Chien, one of the research team's members. Chien leads the Artificial Intelligence Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "In order to study unpredictable ocean phenomena, we need to develop submersibles that can navigate and make decisions on their own, and in real-time. Doing so would help us understand our own oceans -- and maybe those on other planets." Other research members hail from Caltech in Pasadena; the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing, California; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and Remote Sensing Solutions, Barnstable, Massachusetts. If successful, this project could lead to submersibles that can plot their own course as they go, based on what they detect in the water around them. That could change how we collect data, while also developing the kind of autonomy needed for planetary exploration, said Andrew Thompson, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at Caltech. "Our goal is to remove the human effort from the day-to-day piloting of these robots and focus that time on analyzing the data collected," Thompson said. "We want to give these submersibles the freedom and ability to collect useful information without putting a hand in to correct them." At the smallest levels, marine life exists as "biocommunities." Nutrients in the water are needed to support plankton; small fish follow the plankton; big fish follow them. Find the nutrients, and you can follow the breadcrumb trail to other marine life. But that's easier said than done. Those nutrients are swept around by ocean currents, and can change direction suddenly. Life under the sea is constantly shifting in every direction, and at varying scales of size. "It's all three dimensions plus time," Chien said about the challenges of tracking ocean features. "Phenomena like algal blooms are hundreds of kilometers across. But small things like dinoflagellate clouds are just dozens of meters across." It might be easy for a fish to track these features, but it's nearly impossible for an unintelligent robot. "Truly autonomous fleets of robots have been a holy grail in oceanography for decades," Thompson said. "Bringing JPL's exploration and AI experience to this problem should allow us to lay the groundwork for carrying out similar activities in more challenging regions, like Earth's polar regions and even oceans on other planets." The recent field work at Monterey Bay was funded by JPL and Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS). Additional research is planned in the spring of 2007. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA. For more information about this research, visit: http://kiss.caltech.edu/new_website/techdev/seafloor/seafloor.html

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Radio on Europe's New Mars Orbiter Aces Relay Test Data from each of the two rovers active on Mars reached Earth last week in the successful first relay test of a NASA radio aboard Europe's new Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). The transmissions from NASA rovers Opportunity and Curiosity, received by one of the twin Electra radios on the orbiter on Nov. 22, mark a strengthening of the international telecommunications network supporting Mars exploration. The orbiter's main radio for communications with Earth subsequently relayed onward to Earth the data received by Electra. The European Space Agency's (ESA's) ExoMars/Trace Gas Orbiter reached Mars on Oct. 19, 2016. As planned, its initial orbit shape is highly elliptical, ranging from as far as 60,000 miles (98,000 kilometers) above the surface to less than 200 miles (less than 310 kilometers). Each loop takes 4.2 days to complete. Frequent use of TGO's relay capability to support Mars rover operations is planned to begin more than a year from now. That's after the orbiter finishes adjusting its orbit to a near-circular path about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Mars' surface. Meanwhile, four other active Mars orbiters also carry radios that can provide relay service for missions on the surface of Mars. The two active rovers routinely send data homeward via NASA orbiters Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). "The arrival of ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars, with its NASA-provided Electra relay payload on board, represents a significant step forward in our Mars relay capabilities," said Chad Edwards, manager of the Mars Relay Network Office within the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "In concert with our three existing NASA orbiters and ESA's earlier Mars Express orbiter, we now have a truly international Mars relay network that will greatly increase the amount of data that future Mars landers and rovers can return from the surface of the Red Planet." NASA is on an ambitious journey to Mars that will include sending humans to the Red Planet. Current and future robotic spacecraft are leading the way and will prepare an infrastructure in advance for human missions. The JPL-designed Electra radios include special features for relaying data from a rover or stationary lander to an orbiter passing overhead. Relay of information from Mars-surface craft to Mars orbiters, then from the Mars orbiters to Earth, enables receiving much more data from the surface missions than would be possible with a direct-to-Earth radio link from the rovers or landers. "We already have almost 13 years' experience using ESA's Mars Express as an on-call backup for data relay from active Mars rovers, and TGO will greatly expand this to routine science-data relay," said Michel Denis, TGO flight director at ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. "In 2020, TGO will extend this relay support to ESA's ExoMars rover and the Russian Surface Platform, an important capability together with its science mission that enhances the international data network at Mars." As an example of Electra capabilities, during a relay session between an Electra on the surface and one on an orbiter, the radios can maximize data volume by actively adjusting the data rate to be slower when the orbiter is near the horizon from the surface robot's perspective, faster when it is overhead. Curiosity and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter already use Electra technology to relay data. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, in orbit since 2014, also carries an Electra radio. Due to improvements in the newest Electra radios and reduced interference levels, TGO's relay radios are expected to offer relay performance about double that of MRO's Electra. TGO's main X-band radio uses a dish antenna 87 inches (2.2 meters) in diameter to communicate with Earth-based antenna networks operated by ESA, NASA and Russia. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Curiosity, Opportunity, MRO and Odyssey missions, and NASA's role in the ESA ExoMars program for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more about ESA's ExoMars program, including TGO, visit: http://exploration.esa.int/mars/ For more information about NASA's journey to Mars, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA's ISS-RapidScat Earth Science Mission Ends NASA's ISS-RapidScat Earth science instrument has ended operations following a successful two-year mission aboard the International Space Station. › Read the full story Metallic Glass Gears Make for Graceful Robots JPL research using metallic glass could change how robots move and reduce their cost. › Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW Study Sheds New Insights Into Global Warming Trends A new analysis of the temporary slowdown seen in Earth's global average surface temperature warming trend between 1998 and 2013 concludes Earth's ocean absorbed the extra heat. › Read the full story Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior Frozen beneath cracked, pitted plains on Mars lies about as much water as is in Lake Superior, researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have determined. › Read the full story NASA Saturn Mission Prepares for 'Ring-Grazing Orbits' Cassini is set to enter the first phase of its dramatic endgame. › Read the full story NASA Selects Launch Services for Global Surface Water Survey Mission NASA has selected SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency's Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. › Read the full story

 

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Teachable Moment - Spacecraft's 'Ring-Grazing' Maneuver to Deliver New Science from Saturn

 

Spacecraft's 'Ring-Grazing' Maneuver to Deliver New Science from Saturn Next week, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will go where no spacecraft has gone before when it flies just past the edge of Saturn's main rings. Cassini's ring-grazing orbits will allow scientists to see features in Saturn's rings, up close, that they've only been able to observe from afar. These new perspectives could help answer questions scientists have long puzzled over, but they will also certainly lead to new questions to add to our ongoing exploration of the ringed giant planet. Find out how to use this Teachable Moment as a lesson about scientific research in space and give students an opportunity to have their work featured on a NASA website as part of the Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest.

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW New Ceres Views as Dawn Moves Higher The brightest area on Ceres stands out amid shadowy, cratered terrain in a dramatic new view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, taken as it looked off to the side of the dwarf planet. Dawn snapped this image on Oct. 16, from its fifth science orbit, in which the angle of the sun was different from that in previous orbits. Dawn was about 920 miles (1,480 kilometers) above Ceres when this image was taken -- an altitude the spacecraft had reached in early October. Occator Crater, with its central bright region and secondary, less-reflective areas, appears quite prominent near the limb, or edge, of Ceres. At 57 miles (92 kilometers) wide and 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep, Occator displays evidence of recent geologic activity. The latest research suggests that the bright material in this crater is comprised of salts left behind after a briny liquid emerged from below, froze and then sublimated, meaning it turned from ice into vapor. The impact that formed the crater millions of years ago unearthed material that blanketed the area outside the crater, and may have triggered the upwelling of salty liquid. "This image captures the wonder of soaring above this fascinating, unique world that Dawn is the first to explore," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Dawn scientists also have released an image of Ceres that approximates how the dwarf planet's colors would appear to the human eye. This view, produced by the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, combines images taken from Dawn's first science orbit in 2015, using the framing camera's red, green and blue filters. The color was calculated based on the way Ceres reflects different wavelengths of light. The spacecraft has gathered tens of thousands of images and other information from Ceres since arriving in orbit on March 6, 2015. After spending more than eight months studying Ceres at an altitude of about 240 miles (385 kilometers), closer than the International Space Station is to Earth, Dawn headed for a higher vantage point in August. In October, while the spacecraft was at its 920-mile altitude, it returned images and other valuable insights about Ceres. On Nov. 4, Dawn began making its way to a sixth science orbit, which will be over 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from Ceres. While Dawn needed to make several changes in its direction while spiraling between most previous orbits at Ceres, engineers have figured out a way for the spacecraft to arrive at this next orbit while the ion engine thrusts in the same direction that Dawn is already going. This uses less hydrazine and xenon fuel than Dawn's normal spiral maneuvers. Dawn should reach this next orbit in early December. One goal of Dawn's sixth science orbit is to refine previously collected measurements. The spacecraft's gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, which has been investigating the composition of Ceres' surface, will characterize the radiation from cosmic rays unrelated to Ceres. This will allow scientists to subtract "noise" from measurements of Ceres, making the information more precise. The spacecraft is healthy as it continues to operate in its extended mission phase, which began in July. During the primary mission, Dawn orbited and accomplished all of its original objectives at Ceres and protoplanet Vesta, which the spacecraft visited from July 2011 to September 2012. Dawn's mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 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, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission More information about Dawn is available at the following sites: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW Study Finds Widespread Land Losses from Gulf Oil Spill Fast Facts: › NASA airborne radar maps found a dramatic increase in shoreline erosion in parts of coastal Louisiana affected by a big 2010 oil spill. › Oil weakens and kills vegetation, leading to the loss of roots that help hold soil together, and reduces natural coastal defenses against flooding. › New mapping method will allow scientists to better monitor shoreline erosion after future oil spills. Dramatic, widespread shoreline loss is revealed in new NASA/U.S. Geological Survey annual maps of the Louisiana marshlands where the coastline was most heavily coated with oil during the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Following the spill, the length of shoreline that receded more than 13 feet (4 meters) a year quadrupled compared to the year before the spill. The land losses occurred mainly in areas where oil had washed ashore during the spill. A research team led by Amina Rangoonwala of USGS used airborne remote sensing imagery to analyze shoreline loss across nearly the entire upper Barataria Bay, located on the western side of the Mississippi River Delta, beginning a year before the spill and extending for 2.5 years after it. To determine whether the erosion was likely to be caused by the oil, they also compared shoreline loss linked to the deposited oil with shoreline erosion caused by high waves from Hurricane Isaac in 2012. The team found that although erosion occurred at isolated sections of the shoreline before the spill, the pre-spill shoreline (as analyzed from 2009 to 2010) was largely stable. In the first year after the spill (2010 to 2011), the erosion pattern changed dramatically from isolated to widespread. Erosion occurred mainly along shorelines with documented heavy to moderate oil coating. In the second year after the spill (2011 to 2012), the higher loss rates extended to areas that had less oil coating. Oil is known to weaken or kill vegetation, leading to loss of the roots that help hold soil together. In August 2012, two months after the two-year post-spill period, Hurricane Isaac made a direct hit on Barataria Bay. Erosion rates measured in the four months after the hurricane were higher than those measured after the spill. But this erosion occurred primarily on just a few shorelines that before the spill showed evidence of heightened susceptibility to wave-generated erosion. "Our study uniquely shows that the patterns of shoreline recession seen in this region can be directly related to distinctly different causes: broadly dispersed erosion due to oiling from the Deepwater Horizon spill, and enhanced, but spatially limited, erosion due to intense storm impacts," said Rangoonwala. The wetland impacts of the spill documented by the team included both the loss of wetlands due to shoreline erosion, and island fragmentation, where small islands are broken into even smaller islands, creating more shoreline. Land lost from fragmentation is unlikely to be reestablished, particularly in this part of the Mississippi River delta where levees prevent an influx of new sediments from the river. This will alter natural coastal defenses against flooding. The images collected in the annual surveys and following Hurricane Isaac were obtained from NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), developed and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. UAVSAR flies on a C-20A research aircraft based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center facility in Palmdale, California. UAVSAR's polarized radar produced detailed representations of the marsh, which USGS scientists then used to develop a process to analyze the shoreline recession by mapping the change in shore location. "Through this process, USGS and NASA scientists developed a repeatable, quantitative mapping method that will allow us to monitor shoreline erosion after oil spills in the future," said study co-author Cathleen Jones of JPL. "Being able to compare shoreline losses in a year without any major storm to losses both after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and after the hurricane was essential to correlating the erosion of the marsh to its underlying causes." The study, "Wetland shoreline recession in the Mississippi River Delta from petroleum oiling and cyclonic storms," is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. NASA collects data from space, air, land and sea 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. Developed to test new technologies and study Earth surface dynamics, UAVSAR is informing the design and planning for a future spaceborne radar mission, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), which is planned to image almost the entire 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 about NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earth

 

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Free 80th Anniversary Calendar - Download Now

 

Celebrate Space Exploration with JPL! Eighty years ago, seven young men drove out to a dry canyon wash in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and helped jump-start the Space Age. Discover more from JPL's 80-year history of daring mighty things with our free calendar. It features photos from JPL and NASA history as well as key anniversaries and happenings at the Laboratory. Download our free calendar and celebrate space exploration with us.   You have registered to receive these electronic files via email. If you prefer not to receive these emails in the future, please click on the "Manage Your Subscription" link at the bottom of this email and follow the instructions.  If you require any assistance, please reply to this email.

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

LATEST NEWS First GRACE Follow-On Satellite Completes Construction Construction is now complete on the first of the two satellites for NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, planned for launch in the December 2017/January 2018 timeframe. The satellite, built by Airbus Defence and Space at its manufacturing facility in Friedrichshafen, Germany, will spend the next several months undergoing testing at the IABG test center in Ottobrunn, near Munich. The second GRACE-FO satellite will be ready for testing in the near future. GRACE-FO is a successor to NASA's GRACE mission, which launched in 2002 and is still in operation. The twin GRACE-FO satellites, which operate in tandem, will continue GRACE's legacy of tracking Earth's mass redistribution and monitoring changes in underground water storage, ice sheets, glaciers, and sea level. These measurements provide a unique view of Earth's climate and have far-reaching benefits to society and the world's population. As they travel together around Earth, the GRACE satellites constantly take very exact measurements of the distance between them, which changes as Earth's gravitational pull varies. A global positioning system and a microwave ranging system measure the distance between the satellites to within one micron. Variations in gravitational pull are caused by local changes in Earth's mass. Masses of water, ice, air and solid Earth can be moved by weather patterns, seasonal change, climate change, and even tectonic events such as large earthquakes. From the GRACE data, scientists are able to map Earth's gravitational field monthly. "GRACE data have revolutionized our understanding of Earth's water cycle and how water and ice are distributed on the planet," said Frank Webb, JPL GRACE-FO program manager. "From it, we can see clear trends in the ice-mass loss in the Arctic and the Antarctic, and clear trends in droughts in South America, Australia and Asia. These are key indicators of how the planet is responding to changes in our climate." For example, GRACE has been instrumental in documenting the loss of groundwater in California and around the world. The GRACE-FO satellites will test a new inter-satellite instrument called a laser ranging interferometer, developed by a German/American joint collaboration, for use in future generations of gravitational research satellites. The GRACE-FO satellites will be launched together into a polar orbit at an altitude of about 300 miles (500 kilometers) and at a distance of about 140 miles (220 kilometers) apart. Over the course of the five-year GRACE-FO mission, the satellites will provide an updated measurement of Earth's gravitational field every 30 days. In addition, each of the satellites will supply up to 200 profiles of temperature distribution and water vapor content for the atmosphere and the ionosphere daily. GRACE-FO is a partnership between NASA and the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ). NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information on GRACE-FO, visit: http://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/ For more on GRACE, visit: http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace NASA collects data from space, air, land and sea 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.

 

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NASA Essay Contest - Cassini Scientist for a Day

 

Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest NASA is inviting students in grades 5-12 and their classrooms to participate in the annual Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest. To participate, students choose one of three images taken by the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn. Then students write an essay to explain why their chosen image makes the best science target. The winning essays will be posted on the NASA Solar System Exploration website and the winning schools will be invited to participate in a teleconference or videoconference with mission scientists. › Learn more and enter The contest meets national English and science education standards.

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Space Telescopes Pinpoint Elusive Brown Dwarf Two NASA space telescopes jointly observed a microlensing event, when a distant star brightens due to the gravitational field of at least one foreground cosmic object. › Read the full story NASA to Launch Fleet of Hurricane-Tracking SmallSats NASA is set to launch its first Earth science small-satellite constellation, which will help improve hurricane intensity, track and storm surge forecasts, on Dec. 12. › Read the full story

 

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NASA/JPL Teacher Workshop - Lunar and Meteorite Sample Certification

 

Lunar and Meteorite Sample Certification When: Saturday, Dec. 3, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Where: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California Target Audience: Teachers for grades K-12 Overview: NASA makes actual samples from the historic Apollo missions available to lend to teachers. You must attend this certification process to bring the excitement of real lunar rocks and regolith samples to your students. This workshop is recommended for classroom teachers for all grade levels. › Submit a reservation request Note: A reservation request does not guarantee you a spot in this workshop. Once you submit your request, we will review it and email you with further instructions. Questions? Call the Educator Resource Center at 818-393-5917. 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. More Upcoming Educator Workshops: Saturday, Nov. 19 Pi in the Sky This workshop in Downey, California, will introduce educators to our popular Pi in the Sky illustrated math problem set, which give students a chance to apply the mathematical constant pi to some of the real calculations space explorers use every day. Saturday, Dec. 17 Making Moon Craters In this Downey, California, workshop, you'll learn how to use baking ingredients to whip up a moon-like crater as a demonstration for students in classrooms, camps or at home.

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Small Satellites Will Take a Fresh Look at Earth Beginning this month, NASA is launching a suite of six next-generation, Earth-observing small satellite missions to demonstrate innovative new approaches for studying our changing planet. These small satellites range in size from a loaf of bread to a small washing machine and weigh from a few to 400 pounds (180 kilograms). Their small size keeps development and launch costs down as they often hitch a ride to space as a "secondary payload" on another mission's rocket -- providing an economical avenue for testing new technologies and conducting science. "NASA is increasingly using small satellites to tackle important science problems across our mission portfolio," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "They also give us the opportunity to test new technological innovations in space and broaden the involvement of students and researchers to get hands-on experience with space systems." Small-satellite technology has led to innovations in how scientists approach Earth observations from space. These new missions, five of which are scheduled to launch during the next several months, will debut new methods to measure hurricanes, Earth's energy budget, aerosols and weather. "NASA is expanding small satellite technologies and using low-cost, small satellites, miniaturized instruments, and robust constellations to advance Earth science and provide societal benefit through applications," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. Four CubeSats in Three Launches Scheduled to launch this month, RAVAN, the Radiometer Assessment using Vertically Aligned Nanotubes, is a CubeSat that will demonstrate new technology for detecting slight changes in Earth's energy budget at the top of the atmosphere - essential measurements for understanding greenhouse gas effects on climate. RAVAN is led by Bill Swartz at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. In spring 2017, two CubeSats are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station for a detailed look at clouds. Data from the satellites will help improve scientists' ability to study and understand clouds and their role in climate and weather. IceCube, developed by Dong Wu at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will use a new, miniature, high-frequency microwave radiometer to measure cloud ice. HARP, the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter, developed by Vanderlei Martins at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Baltimore, will measure airborne particles and the distribution of cloud droplet sizes with a new method that looks at a target from multiple perspectives. In early 2017, MiRaTA -- the Microwave Radiometer Technology Acceleration mission -- is scheduled to launch into space with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Joint Polar Satellite System-1. MiRaTA packs many of the capabilities of a large weather satellite into a spacecraft the size of a shoebox, according to Principal Investigator Kerri Cahoy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. MiRaTA's miniature sensors will collect data on temperature, water vapor and cloud ice that can be used in weather forecasting and storm tracking. The RAVAN, HARP, IceCube and MiRaTA CubeSat missions are funded and managed by NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) in the Earth Science Division. ESTO supports technologists at NASA centers, industry and academia to develop and refine new methods for observing Earth from space, from information systems to new components and instruments. "The affordability and rapid build times of these CubeSat projects allow for more risk to be taken, and the more risk we take now the more capable and reliable the instruments will be in the future," said Pamela Millar, ESTO flight validation lead. "These small satellites are changing the way we think about making instruments and measurements. The cube has inspired us to think more outside the box." Two Small-Satelite Constellations NASA's early investment in these new Earth-observing technologies has matured to produce two robust science missions, the first of which is set to launch in December. CYGNSS -- the Cyclone, Global Navigation Satellite System -- will be NASA's first Earth science small satellite constellation. Eight identical satellites will fly in formation to measure wind intensity over the ocean, providing new insights into tropical cyclones. Its novel approach uses reflections from GPS signals off the ocean surface to monitor surface winds and air-sea interactions in rapidly evolving cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons throughout the tropics. CYGNSS, led by Chris Ruf at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is targeted to launch on Dec. 12 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Derek Posselt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is the deputy principal investigator. Earlier this year NASA announced the start of a new mission to study the insides of hurricanes with a constellation of 12 CubeSats. TROPICS -- the Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats -- will use radiometer instruments based on the MiRaTA CubeSat that will make frequent measurements of temperature and water vapor profiles throughout the life cycle of individual storms. William Blackwell at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington leads the mission. CYGNSS and TROPICS both benefited from early ESTO technology investments. These Earth Venture missions are small, targeted science investigations that complement NASA's larger Earth research missions. The rapidly developed, cost-constrained Earth Venture projects are competitively selected and funded by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program within the Earth Science Division. Small spacecraft and satellites are helping NASA advance scientific and human exploration, reduce the cost of new space missions, and expand access to space. Through technological innovation, small satellites enable entirely new architectures for a wide range of activities in space with the potential for exponential jumps in transformative science. For video and animations of NASA small satellite projects, visit: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12411 For more information about NASA's small satellite projects, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/smallsats

 

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