JPL Airborne Sensor to Study 'Rivers in the Sky'

Feature Feb. 10, 2011

JPL Airborne Sensor to Study 'Rivers in the Sky'

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-048&cid=release_2011-048

They're called atmospheric rivers — narrow regions in Earth's atmosphere that
transport enormous amounts of water vapor across the Pacific or other regions. Aptly
nicknamed "rivers in the sky," they can transport enough water vapor in one day, on
average, to flood an area the size of Maryland 0.3 meters (1 foot) deep, or about seven
times the average daily flow of water from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. The phenomenon was the subject of a recent major emergency preparedness scenario led by the U.S. Geological Survey, "ARkStorm," which focused on the possibility of a series of strong atmospheric rivers striking California — a scenario of flooding, wind and mudslides the USGS said could cause damages exceeding those of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

While atmospheric rivers are responsible for great quantities of rain that can produce
flooding, they also contribute to beneficial increases in snowpack. A series of
atmospheric rivers fueled the strong winter storms that battered the U.S. West Coast
from western Washington to Southern California from Dec. 10 to 22, 2010, producing 28 to 64 centimeters (11 to 25 inches) of rain in certain areas. The atmospheric rivers also contributed to the snowpack in the Sierras, which received 75 percent of its annual snow by Dec. 22, the first full day of winter.

To improve our understanding of how atmospheric rivers form and behave and
evaluate the operational use of unmanned aircraft for investigating these phenomena,
NASA scientists, aircraft and sensors will participate in a National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration-led airborne field campaign slated to begin Feb. 11.

Called Winter Storms and Pacific Atmospheric Rivers, or WISPAR, the field campaign,
which continues through the end of February, is designed to demonstrate new
technology, contribute to our understanding of atmospheric rivers and assist NOAA in
potentially conducting offshore monitoring of atmospheric rivers to aid in future
weather predictions.

A NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft operated out of NASA's Dryden Flight
Research Center in Southern California is scheduled to depart Dryden Friday
morning, Feb. 11, on the campaign's first science flight. The 24-hour flight will study
an atmospheric river currently developing in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii that appears
as though it will impact the Oregon-California coast this weekend. Aboard the Global
Hawk will be new weather reconnaissance devices called dropsondes developed by
the National Center for Atmospheric Research that will take temperature, wind and
other readings as they descend through an atmospheric river. Also aboard will be an
advanced water vapor sensor — the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated
Circuit Sounding Radiometer, or HAMSR — created by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The remote-sensing HAMSR instrument analyzes the heat radiation emitted by oxygen
and water molecules in the atmosphere to determine their density and temperature. The instrument operates at microwave frequencies that can penetrate clouds, enabling it to determine temperature, humidity and cloud structure under all weather conditions. This capability is critical for studying atmospheric processes associated with bad weather, like the conditions present during atmospheric river events.

HAMSR Principal Investigator Bjorn Lambrigtsen of JPL says the instrument — the
most accurate and sensitive of its kind in the world — will help scientists better
understand these unique weather phenomena.

"The WISPAR campaign is intended to study the concentrated streams of tropical
moisture that sometimes get connected with cold fronts and winter storms approaching
the U.S. West Coast — sometimes called the pineapple express, since they often
originate near Hawaii — which can result in very intense rain events," Lambrigtsen
said. "HAMSR, flying on NASA's unpiloted Global Hawk well above the weather but
close enough to get a much more detailed picture than is possible from a satellite, will
be used to map out this phenomenon and answer scientific questions about the
formation and structure of these systems."

NASA's Global Hawk is an ideal platform from which to conduct WISPAR science
because it is able to fly long distances, stay aloft for more than 24 hours and travel at
high and low altitudes that could be dangerous for humans. Lambrigtsen will be at
Dryden in the Global Hawk Operations Center during the flights, using data from the
sensor and other information to adjust the Global Hawk's flight track, as necessary, to
optimize the sampling of the atmospheric rivers.

Lambrigtsen said the public can monitor the progress of the WISPAR science flights in
real time on a WISPAR version of JPL's hurricane portal website at
http://winterscience.jpl.nasa.gov/WISPAR2011/ . The site will display the most recent
satellite images, the Global Hawk flight track and a real-time subset of HAMSR data.

For more information about WISPAR, visit:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110210_atmosphericrivers.html . For
more on HAMSR, see: http://microwavescience.jpl.nasa.gov/instruments/hamsr/ .

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

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New View of Family Life in the North American Nebula

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 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

Image advisory: 2011-047 Feb. 10, 2011

New View of Family Life in the North American Nebula

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-047&cid=release_2011-047

PASADENA, Calif. -- Stars at all stages of development, from dusty little tots to young adults, are
on display in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

This cosmic community is called the North American nebula. In visible light, the region resembles
the North American continent, with the most striking resemblance being the Gulf of Mexico. But
in Spitzer's infrared view, the continent disappears. Instead, a swirling landscape of dust and
young stars comes into view.

"One of the things that makes me so excited about this image is how different it is from the
visible image, and how much more we can see in the infrared than in the visible," said Luisa
Rebull of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
Calif. Rebull is lead author of a paper about the observations, accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. "The Spitzer image reveals a wealth of detail about the
dust and the young stars here."

The new image is online at
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/pia13844.html.

Rebull and her team have identified more than 2,000 new, candidate young stars in the region.
There were only about 200 known before. Because young stars grow up surrounded by blankets
of dust, they are hidden in visible-light images. Spitzer's infrared detectors pick up the glow of
the dusty, buried stars.

A star is born inside a collapsing ball of gas and dust. As the material collapses inward, it flattens
out into a disk that spins around together with the forming star like a spinning top. Jets of gas
shoot perpendicularly away from the disk, above and below it. As the star ages, planets are
thought to form out of the disk -- material clumps together, ultimately growing into mature
planets. Eventually, most of the dust dissipates, aside from a tenuous ring similar to the one in
our solar system, referred to as Zodiacal dust.

The new Spitzer image reveals all the stages of a star's young life, from the early years when it is
swaddled in dust to early adulthood, when it has become a young parent to a family of
developing planets. Sprightly "toddler" stars with jets can also be identified in Spitzer's view.

"This is a really busy area to image, with stars everywhere, from the North American complex
itself, as well as in front of and behind the region," said Rebull. "We refer to the stars that are not
associated with the region as contamination. With Spitzer, we can easily sort this contamination
out and clearly distinguish between the young stars in the complex and the older ones that are
unrelated."

The North American nebula still has a mystery surrounding it, involving its power source.
Nobody has been able to identify the group of massive stars that is thought to be dominating the
nebula. The Spitzer image, like images from other telescopes, hints that the missing stars are
lurking behind the Gulf of Mexico portion of the nebula. This is evident from the illumination
pattern of the nebula, especially when viewed with the detector on Spitzer that picks up 24-
micron infrared light. That light appears to be coming from behind the Gulf of Mexico's dark
tangle of clouds, in the same way that sunlight creeps out from behind a rain cloud.

The nebula's distance from Earth is also a mystery. Current estimates put it at about 1,800 light-
years from Earth. Spitzer will refine this number by finding more stellar members of the North
American complex.

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of the liquid coolant needed to chill its
longer-wavelength instruments. Currently, Spitzer's two shortest-wavelength channels (3.6 and
4.5 microns) are still working. The composite image shows light from both the infrared array
camera and multiband imaging processor. Infrared light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns is
color-coded blue; 8.0-micron light is green; and 24-micron light is red.

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 in Pasadena. Caltech
manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/
and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

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NASA Announces Candidates for Cubesat Space Missions

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 Vega 818-354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Priscilla.v.vega@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2011-045 Feb. 9, 2011

NASA Announces Candidates for Cubesat Space Missions

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-045&cid=release_2011-045

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA has selected 20 small satellites, including two from NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets planned to launch in 2011 and 2012.
The proposed CubeSats come from a high school in Virginia, universities across the country, NASA field centers
and Department of Defense organizations.

CubeSats are a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. The cube-shaped satellites are approximately
four inches long, have a volume of about one quart and weigh 2.2 pounds or less.

The selections are from the second round of the CubeSat Launch Initiative. The satellites are expected to conduct
technology demonstrations, educational or science research missions. The selected spacecraft are eligible for
flight after final negotiations when an opportunity arises.

The satellites come from the following organizations, which include the first high school proposal selected for a
CubeSat flight:

-- Air Force Research Lab, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
-- Drexel University, Philadelphia
-- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. (two CubeSats)
-- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. (IPEX: Intelligent Payload Experiment, and LMRSat)
-- Naval Research Lab, Washington (two CubeSats)
-- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-- Morehead State University, Morehead, Ky.
-- The Planetary Society, Pasadena, in partnership with NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
-- Space and Missile Defense Command, Huntsville, Ala.
-- St. Louis University, St. Louis, Mo.
-- Thomas Jefferson High School, Alexandria, Va.
-- University of Colorado
-- University of Hawaii
-- University of Louisiana, Lafayette
-- University of New Mexico
-- U.S. Military Academy
-- U.S. Naval Academy

The first CubeSats to be carried on an expendable vehicle for the agency's Launch Services Program will
comprise NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNa, mission. ELaNa will fly on the Glory mission
scheduled to lift off on Feb. 23. The 12 CubeSat payloads selected from the first round of the CubeSat Launch
Initiative will have launch opportunities beginning later this year.

For more information about NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative program:
http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/home/CubeSats_initiative.html . For more about NASA and agency
programs: http://www.nasa.gov . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

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NASA Hosting Events for Valentine's Night Comet 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

Feature: 2011-044B Feb. 08, 2011

NASA Hosting Events for Valentine's Night Comet Encounter

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-044b&cid=release_2011-044b

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host several live activities for the Stardust-NExT mission's close
encounter with comet Tempel 1. The closest approach is expected at approximately 8:37 p.m. PST
(11:37 p.m. EST) on Feb. 14, with confirmation received on Earth at about 8:56 p.m. PST (11:56 p.m.
EST).

Live coverage of the Tempel 1 encounter will begin at 8:30 p.m. PST on Feb. 14 on NASA Television
and the agency's website. The coverage will include live commentary from mission control at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and video from Lockheed Martin Space System's
mission support area in Denver.

Live coverage of a news briefing is planned for 10 a.m. PST on Feb. 15. Scheduled participants are:
-- Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, Washington
-- Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
-- Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT project manager, JPL
-- Don Brownlee, Stardust-NExT co-investigator, University of Washington, Seattle

Mission coverage schedule (all times PST and subject to change):

-- 8:30 to 10 p.m., Feb. 14: Live NASA TV commentary begins from mission control; includes
coverage of closest approach and the re-establishment of contact with the spacecraft following
the encounter.

-- Midnight to 1:30 a.m., Feb. 15: NASA TV commentary will chronicle the arrival and
processing of the first five of 72 close-approach images the team expects to be downlinked
after the encounter. The images are expected to include a close-up view of the comet's surface.

-- 10 a.m., Feb. 15: News briefing

-- Starting on Feb. 9, NASA TV will air Stardust-NExT mission animation and other video
during its Video File segments. For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink
information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

-- Commentary and the news conference will also be carried live on one of JPL's Ustream
channels. During events, viewers can engage in a real-time chat and submit questions to the
Stardust-NExT team at: http://www.ustream.tv/user/NASAJPL2 .

The public can watch a real-time animation of the Stardust-NExT comet flyby using NASA's new
"Eyes on the Solar System" Web tool. JPL created this 3-D environment, which allows people to
explore the solar system from their computers. It is available at: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes .

This flyby of Tempel 1 will give scientists an opportunity to look for changes on the comet's surface
since it was visited by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft in July 2005. Since then, Tempel 1 has
completed one orbit of the sun, and scientists are looking forward to monitoring any differences in
the comet.

During its 12 years in space, Stardust became the first spacecraft to collect samples of a comet (Wild 2 in 2004), which were delivered to Earth in 2006 for study. The Stardust-NExT mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.

A press kit and other detailed information about Stardust-NExT is available at:
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov .

-end-

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

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

Blaine Friedlander 607-254-6235
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
bpf2@cornell.edu

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Proposed Mission to Jupiter System Achieves Milestone

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

Feature: 2011-041 Feb. 04, 2011

Proposed Mission to Jupiter System Achieves Milestone

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-041&cid=release_2011-041

With input from scientists around the world, American and European scientists
working on the potential next new mission to the Jupiter system have articulated
their joint vision for the Europa Jupiter System Mission. The mission is a proposed
partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency. The scientists on the
joint NASA-ESA definition team agreed that the overarching science theme for the
Europa Jupiter System Mission will be "the emergence of habitable worlds around
gas giants."

The proposed Europa Jupiter System Mission would provide orbiters around two
of Jupiter's moons: a NASA orbiter around Europa called the Jupiter Europa
Orbiter, and an ESA orbiter around Ganymede called the Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter.

"We've reached hands across the Atlantic to define a mission to Jupiter's water
worlds," said Bob Pappalardo, the pre-project scientist for the proposed Jupiter
Europa Orbiter, who is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif. "The Europa Jupiter System Mission will create a leap in scientific knowledge
about the moons of Jupiter and their potential to harbor life."

The new reports integrate goals that were being separately developed by NASA
and ESA working groups into one unified strategy.

The ESA report is being presented to the European public and science community
this week, and the NASA report was published online in December. The NASA
report is available at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag .

The proposed mission singles out the icy moons Europa and Ganymede as special
worlds that can lead to a broader understanding of the Jovian system and of the
possibility of life in our solar system and beyond. They are natural laboratories for
analyzing the nature, evolution and potential habitability of icy worlds, because
they are believed to present two different kinds of sub-surface oceans.

The Jupiter Europa Orbiter would characterize the relatively thin ice shell above
Europa's ocean, the extent of that ocean, the materials composing its internal
layers, and the way surface features such as ridges and "freckles" formed. It will
also identify candidate sites for potential future landers. Instruments that might be
on board could include a laser altimeter, an ice-penetrating radar, spectrometers
that can obtain data in visible, infrared and ultraviolet radiation, and cameras with narrow- and wide-angle capabilities. The actual instruments to fly would be selected through a NASA competitive call for proposals.

Ganymede is thought to have a thicker ice shell, with its interior ocean sandwiched
between ice above and below. ESA's Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter would investigate
this different kind of internal structure. The Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter would also
study the intrinsic magnetic field that makes Ganymede unique among all the solar
system's known moons. This orbiter, whose instruments would also be chosen
through a competitive process, could include a laser altimeter, spectrometers and
cameras, plus additional fields-and-particles instruments

The two orbiters would also study other large Jovian moons, Io and Callisto, with
an eye towards exploring the Jupiter system as an archetype for other gas giant
planets.

NASA and ESA officials gave the Europa Jupiter System Mission proposal priority
status for continued study in 2009, agreeing that it was the most technically
feasible of the outer solar system flagship missions under consideration.

Over the next few months, NASA officials will be analyzing the joint strategy and
awaiting the outcome of the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey by the National
Research Council of the U.S. National Academies. That survey will serve as a
roadmap for new NASA planetary missions for the decade beginning 2013.

For more information about the Europa Jupiter System Mission, go to
http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/europajupitersystemmissionejsm/ .

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

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Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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Surprise Hidden in Titan's Smog: Cirrus-Like Clouds

Feature: 2011-040 Feb. 3, 2011

Surprise Hidden in Titan's Smog: Cirrus-Like Clouds

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-040&cid=release_2011-040

Every day is a bad-air day on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Blanketed by haze far worse than any
smog belched out in Los Angeles, Beijing or even Sherlock Holmes' London, the moon looks like
a dirty orange ball. Described once as crude oil without the sulfur, the haze is made of tiny
droplets of hydrocarbons with other, more noxious chemicals mixed in. Gunk.

Icky as it may sound, Titan is really the rarest of gems: the only moon in our solar system with an
atmosphere worthy of a planet. This atmosphere comes complete with lightning, drizzle and
occasionally a big, summer-downpour style of cloud made of methane or ethane—hydrocarbons
that are best known for their role in natural gas.

Now, thin, wispy clouds of ice particles, similar to Earth's cirrus clouds, are being reported by
Carrie Anderson and Robert Samuelson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md. The findings, published this week in the journal Icarus, were made using the composite
infrared spectrometer on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Unlike Titan's brownish haze, the ice clouds have the pearly white appearance of freshly fallen
snow. Their existence is the latest clue to the workings of Titan's intriguing atmosphere and its
one-way "cycle" that delivers hydrocarbons and other organic compounds to the ground as
precipitation. Those compounds don't evaporate to replenish the atmosphere, but somehow the
supply has not run out yet.

"This is the first time we have been able to get details about these clouds," says Samuelson, an
emeritus scientist at Goddard and the co-author of the paper. "Previously, we had a lot of
information about the gases in Titan's atmosphere but not much about the [high-altitude]
clouds."

Compared to the puffy methane and ethane clouds found before in a lower part of the
atmosphere by both ground-based observers and in images taken by Cassini's imaging science
subsystem and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, these clouds are much thinner and
located higher in the atmosphere. "They are very tenuous and very easy to miss," says Anderson,
the paper's lead author. "The only earlier hints that they existed were faint glimpses that NASA's
Voyager 1 spacecraft caught as it flew by Titan in 1980."

The full story is online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/titan-clouds.html .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were
designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The CIRS team is based at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the instrument was built.

#2011-040

Written by Elizabeth Zubritsky/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media contact: Jia-Rui Cook/Priscilla Vega
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0850/354-1357
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov / Priscilla.r.vega@jpl.nasa.gov

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Northern Mars Landscape Actively Changing

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 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

Alan Fischer 520-382-0411
Planetary Science Institute
fischer@psi.edu

Daniel Stolte 520-626-4402
University of Arizona, Tucson
stolte@email.arizona.edu

News release: 2011-039 Feb. 3, 2011

Northern Mars Landscape Actively Changing

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-039&cid=release_2011-039

Sand dunes in a vast area of northern Mars long thought to be frozen in time are changing with
both sudden and gradual motions, according to research using images from a NASA orbiter.

These dune fields cover an area the size of Texas in a band around the planet at the edge of Mars'
north polar cap. The new findings suggest they are among the most active landscapes on Mars.
However, few changes in these dark-toned dunes had been detected before a campaign of
repeated imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars five years ago next month.

Scientists had considered the dunes to be fairly static, shaped long ago when winds on the
planet's surface were much stronger than those seen today, said HiRISE Deputy Principal
Investigator Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz. Several sets of
before-and-after images from HiRISE over a period covering two Martian years -- four Earth
years -- tell a different story.

"The numbers and scale of the changes have been really surprising," said Hansen.

A report by Hansen and co-authors in this week's edition of the journal Science identifies the
seasonal coming and going of carbon-dioxide ice as one agent of change, and stronger-than-
expected wind gusts as another.

A seasonal layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, blankets the region in winter and changes
directly back to gaseous form in the spring.

"This gas flow destabilizes the sand on Mars' sand dunes, causing sand avalanches and creating
new alcoves, gullies and sand aprons on Martian dunes," she said. "The level of erosion in just
one Mars year was really astonishing. In some places, hundreds of cubic yards of sand have
avalanched down the face of the dunes."

Wind drives other changes. Especially surprising was the discovery that scars of past sand
avalanches could be partially erased by wind in just one Mars year. Models of Mars' atmosphere
do not predict wind speeds adequate to lift sand grains, and data from Mars landers show high
winds are rare.

"Perhaps polar weather is more conducive to high wind speeds," Hansen said.

In all, modifications were seen in about 40 percent of these far-northern monitoring sites over the
two-Mars-year period of the study.

Related HiRISE research previously identified gully-cutting activity in smaller fields of sand
dunes covered by seasonal carbon-dioxide ice in Mars' southern hemisphere. A report four
months ago showed that those changes coincided with the time of year when ice builds up.

"The role of the carbon-dioxide ice is getting clearer," said Serina Diniega of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the earlier report and a co-author of the
new report. "In the south, we saw before-and-after changes and connected the timing with the
carbon-dioxide ice. In the north, we're seeing more of the process of the seasonal changes and
adding more evidence linking the changes with the carbon dioxide."

Researchers are using HiRISE to repeatedly photograph dunes at all latitudes, to understand
winds in the current climate on Mars. Dunes at latitudes lower than the reach of the seasonal
carbon-dioxide ice do not show new gullies. Hansen said, "It's becoming clear that there are very
active processes on Mars associated with the seasonal polar caps."

The new findings contribute to efforts to understand what features and landscapes on Mars can
be explained by current processes, and which require different environmental conditions.

"Understanding how Mars is changing today is a key first step to understanding basic planetary
processes and how Mars changed over time," said HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen
of the University of Arizona, Tucson, a co-author of both reports. "There's lots of current activity
in areas covered by seasonal carbon-dioxide frost, a process we don't see on Earth. It's important
to understand the current effects of this unfamiliar process so we don't falsely associate them
with different conditions in the past."

The University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory operates the HiRISE camera, which
was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. JPL, a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver,
built the orbiter. For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro
. For more about HiRISE, visit http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu .

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Caltech to Host Earth Sciences Weekend for Teachers

Caltech to Host Earth Sciences Weekend for Teachers
This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

02.03.11 -- Caltech's Tectonics Observatory is hosting the Spring 2011 Meeting of the Far-Western Section
of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT). The meeting is aimed at geoscience teachers
at community colleges, four-year colleges and high school. All are welcome -- participants need not be a member of NAGT.

The event will be held Friday through Sunday, March 25 - 27, 2011, at the Arms Building on Caltech's campus in Pasadena, CA.

The agenda includes field trips, workshops, tours and speakers that will cover a wide range of Earth Sciences.
Participants will be introduced to recent developments in tectonics, geochemistry, seismology, petrology and geomorphology.

Attendees can earn 1.5 continuing education units through the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education.

For detailed information and a registration packet, go to http://www.tectonics.caltech.edu/meetings/nagt/ .

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JPL Hosts Annual High-Tech Small Business Conference

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 Vega 818-354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Priscilla.v.vega@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2011-037 Feb. 2, 2011

JPL to Host High-Tech Small Business Conference

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-037&cid=release_2011-037

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will host the 23rd
annual High-Tech Conference for Small Business on Tuesday, March 1, and Wednesday, March
2, at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel.

The conference will provide an opportunity for technologically oriented small businesses owned
by minorities, women, veterans and service-disabled individuals to discuss subcontract
opportunities with major corporations, federal agencies, local government agencies and JPL's
purchasing and technical communities.

Various "how-to" workshops will include information about conducting business with JPL and
the federal government, certification programs offered by the federal government and JPL's
future technological needs.

"This year, more than ever, people are looking for new ways to market their business and gain
exposure," said Edgar Murillo, High-Tech Conference coordinator and a small business
administrator at JPL. "The High-Tech Conference provides information to assist small businesses
in developing strategies to prepare to become a contractor."

Due to limited space, only prime contractors and government agencies will be allowed to exhibit.
There is no fee to exhibit. Interested and qualified exhibitors should contact Edgar Murillo at
818-354-4550, or at Edgar.M.Murillo@jpl.nasa.gov .

It is estimated there will be 1,000 attendees, including nearly 300 prime contractors, as well as
various JPL subcontractors and government representatives participating as exhibitors.

Interested attendees are encouraged to register early for this event. Online registration is available
at: http://acquisition.jpl.nasa.gov/boo/2011HT/index.asp .

The cost is $140 per person. The registration deadline is Friday, Feb.11. The Westin Los Angeles
Airport Hotel is located at 5400 West Century Blvd., Los Angeles 90045.

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

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NASA's NEOWISE Completes Scan for Asteroids and Comets

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 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

Trent Perrotto 202-358-0321
Headquarters, Washington
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-031 Feb. 1, 2011

NASA's NEOWISE Completes Scan for Asteroids and Comets

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-031&cid=release_2011-031

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's NEOWISE mission has completed its survey of small bodies,
asteroids and comets, in our solar system. The mission's discoveries of previously unknown objects
include 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 134
near-Earth objects (NEOs). The NEOs are asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 45
million kilometers (28 million miles) of Earth's path around the sun.

NEOWISE is an enhancement of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission that
launched in December 2009. WISE scanned the entire celestial sky in infrared light about 1.5 times. It
captured more than 2.7 million images of objects in space, ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids
and comets close to Earth.

In early October 2010, after completing its prime science mission, the spacecraft ran out of the frozen
coolant that keeps its instrumentation cold. However, two of its four infrared cameras remained
operational. These two channels were still useful for asteroid hunting, so NASA extended the
NEOWISE portion of the WISE mission by four months, with the primary purpose of hunting for
more asteroids and comets, and to finish one complete scan of the main asteroid belt.

"Even just one year of observations from the NEOWISE project has significantly increased our
catalog of data on NEOs and the other small bodies of the solar systems," said Lindley Johnson,
NASA's program executive for the NEO Observation Program.

Now that NEOWISE has successfully completed a full sweep of the main asteroid belt, the WISE
spacecraft will go into hibernation mode and remain in polar orbit around Earth, where it could be
called back into service in the future.

In addition to discovering new asteroids and comets, NEOWISE also confirmed the presence of
objects in the main belt that had already been detected. In just one year, it observed about 153,000
rocky bodies out of approximately 500,000 known objects. Those include the 33,000 that NEOWISE
discovered.

NEOWISE also observed known objects closer and farther to us than the main belt, including roughly
2,000 asteroids that orbit along with Jupiter, hundreds of NEOs and more than 100 comets.

These observations will be key to determining the objects' sizes and compositions. Visible-light data
alone reveal how much sunlight reflects off an asteroid, whereas infrared data is much more directly
related to the object's size. By combining visible and infrared measurements, astronomers also can
learn about the compositions of the rocky bodies -- for example, whether they are solid or crumbly.
The findings will lead to a much-improved picture of the various asteroid populations.

NEOWISE took longer to survey the whole asteroid belt than WISE took to scan the entire sky
because most of the asteroids are moving in the same direction around the sun as the spacecraft
moves while it orbits Earth. The spacecraft field of view had to catch up to, and lap, the movement of
the asteroids in order to see them all.

"You can think of Earth and the asteroids as racehorses moving along in a track," said Amy Mainzer,
the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"We're moving along together around the sun, but the main belt asteroids are like horses on the outer
part of the track. They take longer to orbit than us, so we eventually lap them."

NEOWISE data on the asteroid and comet orbits are catalogued at the NASA-funded International
Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for information about all solar system
bodies at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. The science team is
analyzing the infrared observations now and will publish new findings in the coming months.

When combined with WISE observations, NEOWISE data will aid in the discovery of the closest
dim stars, called brown dwarfs. These observations have the potential to reveal a brown dwarf even
closer to us than our closest known star, Proxima Centauri, if such an object does exist. Likewise, if
there is a hidden gas-giant planet in the outer reaches of our solar system, data from WISE and
NEOWISE could detect it.

The first batch of observations from the WISE mission will be available to the public and
astronomical community in April.

"WISE has unearthed a mother lode of amazing sources, and we're having a great time figuring out
their nature," said Edward (Ned) Wright, the principal investigator of WISE at UCLA.

JPL manages WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in
Washington. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program, which
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages. The Space Dynamics Laboratory
in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder,
Colo., built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared
Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL manages
NEOWISE for NASA's Planetary Sciences Division. The mission's data processing also takes place at
the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and
http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

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