Meet the Titans: Dust Disk Found Around Massive Star

Meet the Titans: Dust Disk Found Around Massive Star July 14, 2010

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-235&cid=release_2010-235

A new discovery has the potential to answer the long-standing question of how massive
stars are born -- and hints at the possibility that planets could form around the galaxy's
biggest bodies.

"Astronomers have long been unclear about how the most massive stars form," said
Stefan Kraus, a NASA Sagan Exoplanet Fellow and astronomer at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. "Because they tend to be at very large distances and surrounded
by dusty envelopes, it's very hard to separate and closely observe them."

To get a better look, Kraus' team used the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the
European Southern Observatory in Chile to focus on IRAS 13481-6124, a star located at
a distance of 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, and about 20 times
more massive than our sun. "We were able to get a very sharp view into the innermost
regions around this star by combining the light of separate telescopes," Kraus said,
"basically mimicking the resolving power of a telescope with an incredible 85-meter [280-
foot] mirror."

The team's observations yielded a jackpot result: the discovery of a massive disk of dust
and gas encircling the giant young star. "It's the first time something like this has been
observed," Kraus said. "The disk very much resembles what we see around young stars
that are much smaller, except everything is scaled up and more massive."

The presence of the disk is strong evidence that even the very largest stars in the galaxy
form by the same process as smaller ones -- growing out of the dense accumulation of
vast quantities of gas and dust, rather than the merging of smaller stars, as had been
previously suggested by some scientists. The results were confirmed by NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope. "We looked at archival images of the star taken by Spitzer, and
confirmed that the star is flinging disk material outward from its polar regions, just as we
see with smaller stars and their dust disks," Kraus said.

The discovery also opens up the possibility that planets, perhaps even Earth-like ones,
may be able to form around massive stars like IRAS 13481-6124, in the same way that
they formed around our sun when it was much younger. "In the future, we might be able
to see gaps in this and other dust disks created by orbiting planets, although it is unlikely
that such bodies could survive for long." Kraus said. "A planet around such a massive star
would be destroyed by the strong stellar winds and intense radiation as soon as the
protective disk material is gone, which leaves little chance for the development of solar
systems like our own."

Still, huge stars like IRAS 13481-6124 provide the building blocks for life to arise
elsewhere in the universe. "High-mass stars are where heavy elements necessary for life
are created, so they are of major importance," Kraus said "This discovery is a clearer
picture than we've had before and allows us to understand them better."

Spitzer previously detected dusty disks of planetary debris around more mature massive
stars, further supporting the notion that planets may form even in these extreme
environments. More information about that research is online at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/news/230 . More information about NASA's planet-
finding missions is online at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

The recent and previous Spitzer observations were made before the space
telescope ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009, officially beginning its warm
mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space
Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science
operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of
Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

The Sagan Fellowship Program, administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute
(NExScI) at Caltech aims to advance the scientific and technical goals of NASA's
Exoplanet Exploration Program.

#2010-235
-end-

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

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Study Finds Amazon Storm Killed Half a Billion Trees

JPL/NASA News

Feature July 13, 2010

Study Finds Amazon Storm Killed Half a Billion Trees

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-232&cid=release_2010-232

A single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a
billion trees, according to a new study funded by NASA and Tulane University, New Orleans.

While storms have long been recognized as a cause of Amazon tree loss, this study is the first to
actually quantify losses from a storm. And the losses are much greater than previously
suspected, say the study's authors, which include research scientist Sassan Saatchi of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The work suggests that storms may play a larger
role in the dynamics of Amazon forests than previously recognized, they add.

Previous research had attributed a peak in tree mortality in 2005 solely to a severe drought that
affected parts of the forest. The new study says that a single squall line (a long line of severe
thunderstorms, the kind associated with lightning and heavy rainfall) had an important role in the
tree demise. Research suggests this type of storm might become more frequent in the future in
the Amazon due to climate change, killing a higher number of trees and releasing more carbon
to the atmosphere.

Tropical thunderstorms have long been suspected of wreaking havoc in the Amazon, but this is
the first time researchers have calculated how many trees a single thunderstorm can kill, says
Jeffrey Chambers, a forest ecologist at Tulane University and one of the authors of the paper.
The paper has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the
American Geophysical Union.

Previous studies by a coauthor of this new paper, Niro Higuchi of Brazil's National Institute for
Amazon Research (INPA), showed the 2005 tree mortality spike was the second largest
recorded since 1989 for the Manaus region in the Central Amazon. Also in 2005, large parts of
the Amazon forest experienced one of the harshest droughts of the last century. A study
published in the journal Science in 2009 pointed to the drought as the single agent for a basin-
wide increase in tree mortality. But a very large area with major tree loss (the region near
Manaus) was not affected by the drought.

"We can't attribute [the increased] mortality to just drought in certain parts of the basin--we have
solid evidence that there was a strong storm that killed a lot of trees over a large part of the
Amazon," Chambers says.

From Jan. 16 to 18, 2005, a squall line 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long and 200 kilometers (124
miles) wide crossed the whole Amazon basin from southwest to northeast, causing several
human deaths in the cities of Manaus, Manacaparu, and Santarem. The strong vertical winds
associated with the storm, blowing up to 145 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour), uprooted or
snapped in half trees that were in their path. In many cases, the stricken trees took down some
of their neighbors when they fell.

The researchers used a combination of Landsat satellite images, field-measured tree mortality,
and modeling to determine the number of trees killed by the storm. By linking satellite data to
observations on the ground, the researchers were able to take into account smaller tree
blowdowns (less than 10 trees) that otherwise cannot be detected through satellite images.

Looking at satellite images for the area of Manaus from before and after the storm, the
researchers detected changes in the reflectivity of the forest, which they suspected were
indicative of tree losses. Undisturbed forest patches appeared as closed, green canopy in
satellite images. When trees die and fall, a clearing opens, exposing wood, dead vegetation, and
surface litter. This so-called "woody signal" only lasts for about a year in the Amazon. In a year,
vegetation re-grows and covers the exposed wood and soil. This means the signal is a good
indicator of recent tree deaths.

After seeing disturbances in the satellite images, the researchers established five field sites in
one of the blowdown areas, and counted the number of trees that had been killed by the storm;
researchers can usually tell what killed a tree from looking at it.

"If a tree dies from a drought, it generally dies standing. It looks very different from trees that die
snapped by a storm," Chambers says.

In the most affected plots, near the centers of large blowdowns, up to 80 percent of the trees had
been killed by the storm.

By comparing their field data and the satellite observations, the researchers determined that the
satellite images were accurately pinpointing areas of tree death, and they calculated that the
storm had killed between 300,000 and 500,000 trees in the area of Manaus. The number of trees
killed by the 2005 storm is equivalent to 30 percent of the annual deforestation in that same year
for the Manaus region, which experiences relatively low rates of deforestation.

The team then extrapolated the results to the whole Amazon basin.

"We know that the storm was intense and went across the basin," Chambers says. "To quantify
the potential basin-wide impact, we assumed that the whole area impacted by the storm had a
similar level of tree mortality as the mortality observed in Manaus."

The researchers estimate that between 441 and 663 million trees were destroyed across the
whole basin. This represents a loss equivalent to 23 percent of the estimated mean annual
carbon accumulation of the Amazon forest.

Squall lines that move from southwest to northeast of the forest, like the one in January 2005,
are relatively rare and poorly studied, says Robinson Negron-Juarez, an atmospheric scientist at
Tulane University, and lead author of the study. Storms that are similarly destructive but
advance in the opposite direction (from the northeast coast of South America to the interior of
the continent) occur up to four times per month. They can also generate large forest blowdowns
(contiguous patches of wind-toppled trees), although it's infrequent that either of these two types
of storms crosses the whole Amazon.

"We need to start measuring the forest perturbation caused by both types of squall lines, not only
by the ones coming from the south," Negron-Juarez says. "We need that data to estimate total
biomass loss from these natural events, which has never been quantified."

Chambers says that authors of previous studies on tree mortality in the Amazon have diligently
collected dead-tree tolls, but information on exactly what killed the trees is often lacking, or not
reported.

"It's very important that when we collect data in the field, we do forensics on tree mortality," says
Chambers, who has been studying forest ecology and carbon cycling in the Amazon since 1993.
"Under a changing climate, some forecasts say that storms will increase in intensity. If we start
seeing increases in tree mortality, we need to be able to say what's killing the trees."


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Juno Armored Up to Go to Jupiter

Feature July 12, 2010

Juno Armored Up to Go to Jupiter

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-230&cid=release_2010-230

NASA's Juno spacecraft will be forging ahead into a treacherous environment at Jupiter
with more radiation than any other place NASA has ever sent a spacecraft, except the
sun. In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers
recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. New pictures of
the assembly were released today.

"Juno is basically an armored tank going to Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal
investigator, based at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Without its
protective shield, or radiation vault, Juno's brain would get fried on the very first pass
near Jupiter."

An invisible force field filled with high-energy particles coming off from Jupiter and its
moons surrounds the largest planet in our solar system. This magnetic force field, similar
to a less powerful one around Earth, shields Jupiter from charged particles flying off the
sun. The electrons, protons and ions around Jupiter are energized by the planet's super-
fast rotation, sped up to nearly the speed of light.

Jupiter's radiation belts are shaped like a huge doughnut around the planet's equatorial
region and extend out past the moon Europa, about 650,000 kilometers (400,000 miles)
out from the top of Jupiter's clouds.

"For the 15 months Juno orbits Jupiter, the spacecraft will have to withstand the
equivalent of more than 100 million dental X-rays," said Bill McAlpine, Juno's radiation
control manager, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "In the
same way human beings need to protect their organs during an X-ray exam, we have to
protect Juno's brain and heart."

The strategy? Give Juno a kind of six-sided lead apron on steroids.

With guidance from JPL and the principal investigator, engineers at Lockheed Martin
Space Systems designed and built a special radiation vault made of titanium for a
centralized electronics hub. While other materials exist that make good radiation blockers,
engineers chose titanium because lead is too soft to withstand the vibrations of launch,
and some other materials were too difficult to work with.

Each titanium wall measures nearly a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1
centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass. This
titanium box -- about the size of an SUV's trunk – encloses Juno's command and data
handling box (the spacecraft's brain), power and data distribution unit (its heart) and
about 20 other electronic assemblies. The whole vault weighs about 200 kilograms (500
pounds).

The vault is not designed to completely prevent every Jovian electron, ion or proton from
hitting the system, but it will dramatically slow down the aging effect radiation has on
electronics for the duration of the mission.

"The centralized radiation vault is the first of its kind," Bolton said. "We basically
designed it from the ground up."

When NASA's Galileo spacecraft visited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, its electronics were
shielded by special components designed to be resistant to radiation. Galileo also didn't
need to survive the harshest radiation regions, where Juno will operate.

But Juno isn't relying solely on the radiation vault. Scientists designed a path that takes
Juno around Jupiter's poles, spending as little time as possible in the sizzling radiation
belts around Jupiter's equator. Engineers also used designs for electronics already
approved for the Martian radiation environment, which is harsher than Earth's, though
not as harsh as Jupiter's. Parts of the electronics were made from tantalum, or tungsten,
another radiation-resistant metal. Some assemblies also have their own mini-vaults for
protection.

Packing the assemblies next to each other allows them to shield their neighbors. In
addition, engineers wrapped copper and stainless steel braids like chain mail around wires
connecting the electronics to other parts of the spacecraft.

JPL tested pieces of the vault in a radiation environment similar to Jupiter's to make sure
the design will be able to handle the stress of space flight and the Jupiter environment,
McAlpine said. In a special lead-lined testing tub there, they battered pieces of the
spacecraft with gamma rays from radioactive cobalt pellets and analyzed the results for
Juno's expedition.

The vault was lifted onto Juno's propulsion module on May 19 at Lockheed Martin's
high-bay cleanroom. It will undergo further testing once the whole spacecraft is put
together. The assembly and testing process, which also includes installing solar panels for
the first-ever solar-powered mission to Jupiter, is expected to last through next spring.
Juno is expected to launch in August 2011.

"The Juno assembly is proceeding well," said Tim Gasparrini, Lockheed Martin program
manager. "We have a number of the flight and test unit spacecraft avionics components
installed into the radiation vault for system testing and we have also just installed the first
instrument, the microwave radiometer."

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest
Research Institute at San Antonio, Texas. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver,
Colo., is building the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency in Rome is contributing an
infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.

More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno .

#2010-230

-end-

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jia-rui.c.cook@jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA and Microsoft Provide Mars 3-D Close Encounter

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

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

Michael Mewhinney/Rachel Hoover 650-604-3937/0643
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
michael.s.mewhinney@nasa.gov, rachel.hoover@nasa.gov

Rapid Response Department 503-443-7070
Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
rapidres@waggeneredstrom.com

RELEASE: 2010-229 July 12, 2010

NASA and Microsoft Provide Mars 3-D Close Encounter

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-229&cid=release_2010-229

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new
features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with a high-resolution 3-D
map of the Red Planet.

Microsoft's online virtual telescope explores the universe using images NASA spacecraft return
from other worlds. Teams at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and
Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., jointly developed the software necessary to make NASA's
planetary data available in WorldWide Telescope.

"By providing the Mars dataset to the public on the WorldWide Telescope platform, we are
enabling a whole new audience to experience the thrill of space," said Chris C. Kemp, chief
technology officer for information technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The fully-interactive images and new NASA data will allow viewers to virtually explore Mars
and make their own scientific discoveries. New features include the highest-resolution fully
interactive map of Mars ever created, realistic 3-D renderings of the surface of the planet, and
video tours with two NASA scientists, James Garvin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md., and Carol Stoker of Ames.

Garvin's tour walks viewers through the geological history of Mars and discusses three possible
landing sites for human missions there. Each landing site highlights a different geological era of
the planet.
Stoker's tour addresses the question: "Is there life on Mars?" and describes the findings of
NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.

"Our hope is that this inspires the next generation of explorers to continue the scientific discovery
process," said Ames Center Director S. Pete Worden.

The Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames Research Center developed open source software that
runs on the NASA Nebula cloud computing platform to create and host the high-resolution maps.
The maps contain 74,000 images from Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera and more
than 13,000 high-resolution images of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Each individual HiRISE image
contains more than a billion pixels. The complete maps were rendered into image mosaics
containing more than half a billion smaller images.

"These incredibly detailed maps will enable the public to better experience and explore Mars,"
said Michael Broxton, a research scientist in the Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames. "The
collaborative relationship between NASA and Microsoft Research was instrumental for creating
the software that brings these new Mars images into people's hands, classrooms and living
rooms."

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the planet in 2006 to begin a two-year primary
science mission. The mission has returned more data about Mars than all other spacecraft sent to
the Red Planet. Mars Global Surveyor began orbiting Mars in 1997. The spacecraft operated
longer than any other Mars spacecraft, ceasing operations in November 2006.

"Microsoft has a long-standing relationship with NASA that has enabled us to jointly provide the
public with the ability to discover space in a new way," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president
of the External Research Division of Microsoft Research.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space
Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona,
Tucson, and was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Malin Space
Science Systems in San Diego provided and operated the Mars Orbiter Camera.

To learn more and download the WorldWide Telescope, visit
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org .

For more information and images of Mars taken by HiRISE, visit
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu .

For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

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Heavy Metal Rock Set to Take the Stage

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Priscilla Amador 818-354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
priscilla.r.amador@jpl.nasa.gov

Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin 011-49-6151-90-2696
European Space Agency, Darmstadt, Germany
jlc@esa.int

News release: 2010-228 July 9, 2010

Heavy Metal Rock Set to Take the Stage

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-228&cid=release_2010-228

PASADENA, Calif. – On its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko,
the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, with NASA instruments aboard, will fly past
asteroid Lutetia this Saturday, July 10.

The instruments aboard Rosetta will record the first close-up image of a metal asteroid. They will
also make measurements to help scientists derive the mass of the object, understand the properties
of the asteroid's surface crust, record the solar wind in the vicinity and look for evidence of an
atmosphere. The spacecraft will pass the asteroid at a minimum distance of 3,160 kilometers (1,950
miles) and at a velocity of 15 kilometers (9 miles) per second.

"Little is known about asteroid Lutetia other than it is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) wide," said
Claudia Alexander, project scientist for the U.S. role in the Rosetta mission, from NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Allowing Rosetta's suite of science instruments to focus
on this target of opportunity should greatly expand our knowledge of this huge space rock, while at
the same time giving the mission's science instruments a real out-of-this-world workout."

Previous images of Lutetia were taken by ground-based telescopes and show only hints of the
asteroid's shape. Lutetia will be the second asteroid to receive the full attention of Rosetta and its
instruments. The spacecraft previously flew within 800 kilometers (500 miles) of asteroid Steins in
September of 2008. The Lutetia flyby is the final scientific milestone for Rosetta before controllers
put the spacecraft into hibernation early in 2011, only to wake up in early 2014 for approach to
comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

NASA has contributed an ultraviolet instrument (Alice); a plasma instrument (the Ion and Electron
Sensor); a microwave instrument (Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter); and portions of
the electronics package for the double focusing mass spectrometer of the Rosetta orbiter sensor for
ion and neutral analysis (ROSINA), among other contributions to this international mission.
NASA's Deep Space Network, managed by JPL, will be providing support for tracking and science
operations.

One hundred and fifteen elementary school students will be at JPL during the flyby. The students
will view close-up images of Lutetia, talk to the U.S. Rosetta project manager and participate in
educational activities. The U.S. Rosetta project leaders hope to use this event as a kickoff of more
coordinated activities with selected schools around the United States.

JPL manages NASA's participation in the Rosetta mission. Learn more about NASA's contribution
to Rosetta at: http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Saturn Propellers Reflect Solar System Origins

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jia-rui.c.cook@jpl.nasa.gov

Joe Mason 720-974-5859
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
jmason@ciclops.org

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-227 July 8, 2010

SATURN PROPELLERS REFLECT SOLAR SYSTEM ORIGINS

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-227&cid=release_2010-227

PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists using NASA's Cassini spacecraft at Saturn have stalked
a new class of moons in the rings of Saturn that create distinctive propeller-shaped gaps in
ring material. It marks the first time scientists have been able to track the orbits of
individual objects in a debris disk. The research gives scientists an opportunity to time-
travel back into the history of our solar system to reveal clues about disks around other
stars in our universe that are too far away to observe directly.

"Observing the motions of these disk-embedded objects provides a rare opportunity to
gauge how the planets grew from, and interacted with, the disk of material surrounding
the early sun," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead based at the Space Science
Institute in Boulder, Colo., and a co-author on the paper. "It allows us a glimpse into how the solar system ended up looking the way it does."

The results are published in a new study in the July 8, 2010, issue of the journal
Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Cassini scientists first discovered double-armed propeller features in 2006 in an area now
known as the "propeller belts" in the middle of Saturn's outermost dense ring, known as
the A ring. The spaces were created by a new class of moonlets – smaller than known
moons, but larger than the particles in the rings – that could clear the space immediately
around them. Those moonlets, which were estimated to number in the millions, were not
large enough to clear out their entire path around Saturn, as do the moons Pan and
Daphnis.

The new paper, led by Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini imaging team associate based at
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., reports on a new cohort of larger and rarer moons in
another part of the A ring farther out from Saturn. With propellers as much as hundreds
of times as large as those previously described, these new objects have been tracked for as
long as four years.

The propeller features are up to several thousand kilometers (miles) long and several
kilometers (miles) wide. The moons embedded in the ring appear to kick up ring material
as high as 0.5 kilometers (1,600 feet) above and below the ring plane, which is well
beyond the typical ring thickness of about 10 meters (30 feet). Cassini is too far away to
see the moons amid the swirling ring material around them, but scientists estimate that
they are about a kilometer (half a mile) in diameter because of the size of the propellers.

Tiscareno and colleagues estimate that there are dozens of these giant propellers, and 11
of them were imaged multiple times between 2005 to 2009. One of them, nicknamed
Bleriot after the famous aviator Louis Bleriot, has been a veritable Forrest Gump,
showing up in more than 100 separate Cassini images and one ultraviolet imaging
spectrograph observation over this time.

"Scientists have never tracked disk-embedded objects anywhere in the universe before
now," Tiscareno said. "All the moons and planets we knew about before orbit in empty
space. In the propeller belts, we saw a swarm in one image and then had no idea later on
if we were seeing the same individual objects. With this new discovery, we can now track
disk-embedded moons individually over many years."

Over the four years, the giant propellers have shifted their orbits, but scientists are not yet
sure what is causing the disturbances in their travels around Saturn. Their path may be
upset by bumping into other smaller ring particles, or responding to their gravity, but the
gravitational attraction of large moons outside the rings may also be a factor. Scientists
will continue monitoring the moons to see if the disk itself is driving the changes, similar
to the interactions that occur in young solar systems. If it is, Tiscareno said, this would be
the first time such a measurement has been made directly.

"Propellers give us unexpected insight into the larger objects in the rings," said Linda
Spilker, Cassini project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif. "Over the next seven years, Cassini will have the opportunity to watch the
evolution of these objects and to figure out why their orbits are changing."

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

For newly released images and more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov or http://ciclops.org.

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NASA to Fly Into Hurricane Research This Summer

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

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

News release: 2010-226 July 7, 2010

NASA to Fly Into Hurricane Research This Summer

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-226&cid=release_2010-226

PASADENA, Calif. – Three NASA aircraft will begin flights to study tropical cyclones on Aug. 15
during the agency's first major U.S.-based hurricane field campaign since 2001. The Genesis and
Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, will study the creation and rapid intensification of
hurricanes. Advanced instruments from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will be
aboard two of the aircraft.

One of the major challenges in tropical cyclone forecasting is knowing when a tropical cyclone is
going to form. Scientists will use the data from this six-week field mission to better understand how
tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. Mission scientists will also be looking at how
storms strengthen, weaken and die.

"This is really going to be a game-changing hurricane experiment," said Ramesh Kakar, GRIP program
scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "For the first time, scientists will be able to study
these storms and the conditions that produce them for up to 20 hours straight. GRIP will provide a
sustained, continuous look at hurricane behavior at critical times during their formation and
evolution."

GRIP is led by Kakar and three project scientists: Scott Braun and Gerry Heymsfield of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Edward Zipser of the University of Utah in Salt
Lake City.

Three NASA satellites will play a key role in supplying data about tropical cyclones during the field
mission. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, managed by both NASA and the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency, will provide rainfall estimates and help pinpoint the locations of "hot
towers" or powerhouse thunderstorms in tropical cyclones. The CloudSat spacecraft, developed and
managed by JPL, will provide cloud profiles of storms, which include altitude, temperatures and
rainfall intensity. Several instruments onboard NASA's Aqua satellite, including JPL's Atmospheric
Infrared Sounder (AIRS), will provide infrared, visible and microwave data that reveal such factors
as temperature, air pressure, precipitation, cloud ice content, convection and sea surface temperatures.

The three NASA aircraft taking part in the mission are a DC-8, WB-57 and a remotely piloted Global
Hawk. The DC-8 will fly out of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. The
WB-57 will be based at the NASA Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston. The Global
Hawk will be piloted and based from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, in Palmdale, Calif.,
while flying for up to 20 hours in the vicinity of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

The aircraft will carry a total of 15 instruments, ranging from an advanced microwave sounder to
dropsondes that take measurements as they fall through the atmosphere to the ocean surface. In order
to determine how a tropical cyclone will behave, the instruments will analyze many factors including:
cloud droplet and aerosol concentrations, air temperature, wind speed and direction in storms and on
the ocean's surface, air pressure, humidity, lightning, aerosols, and water vapor. The data also will
validate the observations from space.

The JPL instruments include the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Sounding
Radiometer (HAMSR), flying aboard the Global Hawk; and the Airborne Precipitation Radar (APR-
2), aboard the DC-8. HAMSR is a microwave atmospheric sounder that will be used to infer the 3-D
distribution of temperature, water vapor and cloud liquid water in the atmosphere. It operates even in
the presence of clouds. APR-2 is a dual-frequency weather radar that will take 3-D images of the
precipitation beneath the DC-8 to measure its characteristics. These data will be used to infer rainfall
rates, the location of ice and the speed of air updrafts, all of which are part of the atmospheric
processes that provide a hurricane's energy.

"It was a lot of hard work to assemble the science team and the payload for the three aircraft for
GRIP," Kakar said. "But now that the start of the field experiment is almost here, we can hardly
contain our excitement."

In addition to JPL, several other NASA field centers are involved in the mission, including Goddard;
Johnson; Dryden; the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.; Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Va.; and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Centers provide scientists,
instrument teams, project management or aircraft operations.

GRIP mission planning is being coordinated with two separate hurricane airborne research campaigns
that will be in the field at the same time. The National Science Foundation is sponsoring the PRE-
Depression Investigation of Cloud-systems in the Tropics mission. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration is conducting the Intensity Forecast Experiment 2010. These flights will
be based in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands and Tampa, Fla.

For more information about the GRIP field experiment, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grip . For more
on CloudSat, visit: http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/ . For more on AIRS, see:
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ . For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov .

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

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E-card: Puff, the Magic Dragon?

Puff, the Magic Dragon?

A dragon-shaped cloud of dust seems to fly with the stars in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (bottom). In visible light (top), the creature disappears into the clouds -- perhaps it's "frolicking in the autumn mist" like Puff, the Magic Dragon, from the famous Peter, Paul and Mary song.

Read more about the image at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-225&cid=ecard20100707

+ JPL Homepage: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

+ Spitzer Homepage: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

Media Contact:

Whitney Clavin (818) 354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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Attend Teacher Workshop About 'Marsbound' Mission

Attend Teacher Workshop About 'Marsbound' Mission

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

07.07.10 -- Educators are invited to attend a free workshop about the Marsbound Challenge on Tuesday, July 13, from 1 to 3 p.m.
During the workshop, teachers will learn how to use the Marsbound Challenge board activity to teach students how to plan a mission
to Mars, practice basic math skills and work in collaborative groups just like real engineers. In the activity, students begin with a $250
million budget and see what they can achieve!

This workshop is recommended for teachers of grades 5 - 12.

The workshop will be held at JPL's Educator Resource Center in Pomona, Calif. To sign up, please call the Resource Center at 909-397-4420.

Location:
Educator Resource Center
1460 Holt Ave.
Pomona, CA 91767

Directions: Take the Indian Hill exit on U.S. 10. Go south until Indian Hill ends at Holt. Drive into the shopping center straight ahead.
(Village @ Indian Hill Mall). Look for mall entrance number 3, park and enter the mall.

Parking is free.

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Man in the Moon has 'Graphite Whiskers'

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF., 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

Tina McDowell 202-939-1120
Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C.
tmcdowell@ciw.edu

News release: 2010-220 July 1, 2010

Man in the Moon has 'Graphite Whiskers'

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-220&cid=release_2010-220

PASADENA, Calif. -- In a new analysis of a lunar sample collected by Apollo 17, researchers have
detected and dated carbon on the moon in the form of graphite -- the sooty stuff of pencil lead -- which
survived from around 3.8 billion years ago, when the moon was heavily bombarded by meteorites. Up
to now, scientists thought the trace amounts of carbon previously detected on the surface of the moon
came from the solar wind.

Some of the graphite revealed by the new study appeared in a rare rolled form known as "graphite
whiskers," which scientists believe formed in the very high-temperature reactions initiated by a meteorite
impact. The discovery also means that the moon potentially holds a record of the carbon input by
meteors into the Earth-moon system when life was just beginning to emerge on Earth. The research is
published in the July 2 issue of the journal Science.

"The solar system was chaotic, with countless colliding objects 3.9 billion years ago," explained lead
author Andrew Steele, based at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. "Volatiles --
compounds like water and elements like carbon -- were vaporized under that heat and shock. These
materials were critical to the creation of life on Earth."

"Materials that fell on the early Earth fell on the moon as well, because the two bodies basically share
the same gravity well," said Marc Fries, a planetary scientist who conducted the research while working
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and is now based at the Planetary Science
Institute in Tucson, Ariz. "This sample is like a pristine page from Earth's past, before plate tectonics and
other forces erased the history of this ancient carbon material on Earth."

While the sample from the Mare Serenitatis area came back to Earth in 1972, the research team, led by
scientists at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science, used a new technique
known as Raman spectroscopy on the sample. Previous techniques enabled scientists to get a sense of
the composition, but this kind of spectroscopy is more sensitive and also allows scientists to create an
image of the minerals. The graphite whiskers appeared to be a few micrometers in diameter and up to
about 10 microns long.

Scientists were surprised at the finding of graphite and graphite whiskers.

"It shows that modern spatially resolved techniques could be used to discover further surprises in the
now 40-year-old Apollo collection," said co-author Mihaela Glamoclija, based at the Carnegie
Institution.

The scientists ruled out the possibility that the graphite was a result of contamination, because graphite
whiskers, in particular, form under very hot conditions, between 1,830 and 6,500 degrees Fahrenheit
(1,273 to 3,900 Kelvin). They also ruled out the solar wind as the source, because the graphite and
graphite whiskers were much larger than carbon implanted by the solar wind, and while contamination
occurred throughout the sample, the graphite was restricted to a discrete blackened area of the sample.

"We believe that the carbon we detected either came from the object that made the impact basin, or it
condensed from the carbon-rich gas that was released during impact," said co-author Francis
McCubbin, of the Carnegie Institution.

The research was partly funded by the NASA Astrobiology, Mars Fundamental Research, and the
Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research programs in NASA's Planetary Division in
Washington. The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.

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