Essay Contest Sept. 10, 2012
NASA's Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest Now Open
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is excited to announce that the 2012 edition of its Cassini Scientist for a Day essay contest is now accepting submissions!
The contest is open to students in grades 5 through 12 and gives participants the chance to choose one of three images of the Saturnian system and describe why it's the best choice to learn more about Saturn, its rings and/or moons. The three enticing Saturn objects chosen for this year's contest by science planners for NASA's Cassini mission at Saturn are:
1. Saturn's small shepherd moon, Pan
2. Saturn's F Ring
3. Saturn
Participants pick their favorite image from the list above and write a persuasive essay of less than 500 words describing the scientific merits of their choice and the questions they hope will be answered by those investigating that particular object. Cassini scientists and educators will read all the entries and choose the winners!
All students who write essays will receive a certificate of participation. Winners and their classes will be invited to participate in a teleconference with Cassini scientists and winning essays will be posted on the Cassini website!
For contest rules, videos about each essay topic, a downloadable contest flyer, frequently asked questions, and more information, visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/scientistforaday/
The contest deadline is Wednesday, October 24, 2012. Students may work alone or in groups of up to four. All essays must be submitted by the student's teacher. If the essay contest is used as a class assignment, please send the top three essays from each class along with a list of other students who wrote essays for the contest.
The essay contest meets U.S. National Science and Language Arts Standards.
For questions about the contest, e-mail scientistforaday@jpl.nasa.gov.
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Monday, September 10, 2012
NASA's Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest Now Open
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NASA's 'Earth Now'App Now Available for Android
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.D.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov
Internet advisory: 2012-283 Sept. 10, 2012
NASA's 'Earth Now'App Now Available for Android
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-283&cid=release_2012-283
PASADENA, Calif. -- One of the top iPhone education apps in the iTunes store is now
available for Android. The free NASA "Earth Now" Android app immerses cyber
explorers in dazzling visualizations of near-real-time global climate data from NASA's
fleet of Earth science satellites, bringing a world of ever-changing climate data to users'
fingertips.
Available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/apps , Earth Now displays data on many of the key
vital signs of our planet that NASA satellites track. The data, displayed on your smart
phone in 3-D, include current surface temperature, carbon dioxide levels and global sea
level.
The regularly updated data are displayed as color maps projected over a 3-D Earth model
that can be rotated by a single finger stroke, or zoomed in and out by the pinch or spread
of two fingers. Color-coded legends indicate the relative strength or weakness of
environmental conditions. Descriptions provide background information on each data set.
"Android users now have a new resource for accessing up-to-date information on Earth's
changing climate," said Michael Greene, manager, public engagement strategy at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Since its debut in February 2012,
the iPhone version of Earth Now has been downloaded nearly 250,000 times. Additional
NASA Earth science data sets will be added in the future."
Earth Now is closely integrated with NASA's Webby Award-winning Global Climate
Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov , which is devoted to educating the public about
Earth's changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and
effects of climate change, and information about how NASA studies it. The app was
developed by JPL's Earth Science Communications and Visualization Technology
Applications and Development Teams, with support from NASA Headquarters.
For more information on NASA's Earth Science Program, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth . For a comprehensive list of NASA apps and other
tools to connect and collaborate, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/connect .
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
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Friday, September 7, 2012
NASA's Global Hawk Hurricane Mission Kicks Off
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
alan.d.buis@jpl.nasa.gov
Steve Cole 202-358-0918
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov
Keith Koehler 757-824-1579
NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
keith.a.koehler@nasa.gov
News release: 2012-281 Sept. 7, 2012
NASA's Global Hawk Hurricane Mission Kicks Off
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-281&cid=release_2012-281
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an
unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight
that began in California and ended in Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3)
mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.
The Global Hawk took off from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base,
Calif., Thursday and landed at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., today at
8:37 a.m. PDT (11:37 a.m. EDT) after spending 10 hours collecting data on Hurricane Leslie. The
month-long HS3 mission will help researchers and forecasters uncover information about how
hurricanes and tropical storms form and intensify.
NASA will fly two Global Hawks from Wallops during the HS3 mission. The planes, which can stay
in the air for as long as 28 hours and fly over hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet (18,288
meters), will be operated by pilots in ground control stations at Wallops and Dryden Flight Research
Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The mission targets the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change. The aircraft
help scientists decipher the relative roles of the large-scale environment and internal storm processes
that shape these systems. Studying hurricanes is a challenge for a field campaign like HS3 because of
the small sample of storms available for study and the great variety of scenarios under which they
form and evolve. HS3 flights will continue into early October of this year and be repeated from
Wallops during the 2013 and 2014 hurricane seasons.
The first Global Hawk arrived Sept. 7 at Wallops carrying a payload of three instruments that will
sample the environment around hurricanes. A second Global Hawk, scheduled to arrive in two weeks,
will look inside hurricanes and developing storms with a different set of instruments. The pair will
measure winds, temperature, water vapor, precipitation and aerosols from the surface to the lower
stratosphere.
"The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical
disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert
and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify," said Scott Braun, HS3 mission
principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md.
This Global Hawk will carry a laser system called the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), the Scanning
High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), and the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling
System (AVAPS).
The CPL will measure cloud structure and aerosols such as dust, sea salt and smoke particles. The S-
HIS can remotely sense the temperature and water vapor vertical profile along with the sea surface
temperature and cloud properties. The AVAPS dropsonde system will eject small sensors tied to
parachutes that drift down through the storm, measuring winds, temperature and humidity.
"Instruments on the 'over-storm' Global Hawk will examine the role of deep thunderstorm systems in
hurricane intensity change, particularly to detect changes in low-level wind fields in the vicinity of
these thunderstorms," said Braun.
These instruments will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation using a Doppler radar
and other microwave sensors called the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler
(HIWRAP); the High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), developed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD).
HIWRAP measures cloud structure and winds, providing a three-dimensional view of these
conditions. HAMSR uses microwave wavelengths to measure temperature, water vapor and
precipitation from the top of the storm to the surface. HIRAD measures surface wind speeds and rain
rates.
"HAMSR was the first complete scientific instrument to come out of NASA's Instrument Incubator
Program," said Bjorn Lambrigtsen, HAMSR principal investigator at JPL. "An advanced version of
instruments currently flying on satellites such as NASA's Suomi NPP, HAMSR provides a much
more detailed view of the atmospheric conditions in a hurricane than is possible from satellites.
HAMSR is one of a number of airborne instruments developed by JPL that are being used to carry
out research in a variety of areas."
The HS3 mission is supported by several NASA centers, including Wallops; Goddard; Dryden; Ames
Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.; and JPL. HS3
also has collaborations with partners from government agencies and academia.
HS3 is an Earth Venture mission funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Earth Venture missions are managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program at the
agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The HS3 mission is managed by the Earth
Science Project Office at NASA's Ames Research Center.
For more about the HS3 mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/HS3 . For more on HAMSR, visit:
http://microwavescience.jpl.nasa.gov/instruments/hamsr/ . For more on NASA's Airborne Science
Program, visit: http://airbornescience.nasa.gov .
The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
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NASA Mars Exploration Rover Team to be Honored
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 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
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwane.c.brown@nasa.gov
News release: 2012-280 Sept. 7, 2012
NASA Mars Exploration Rover Team to be Honored
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-280&cid=release_2012-280
PASADENA, Calif. -- The mission team for NASA's long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit
and Opportunity will be awarded the Haley Space Flight Award. The team will receive the award
Sept. 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2012
Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, Calif.
The award is presented for outstanding contributions by an astronaut or flight test personnel to
the advancement of the art, science or technology of astronautics. Past recipients include Alan
Shepherd, John Glenn, Thomas Stafford, Robert Crippen, Kathryn Sullivan and the crew of
space shuttle mission STS-125, which flew in 2009 on the last shuttle mission to NASA's Hubble
Space Telescope.
The award citation praises the rover project's "new techniques in extraterrestrial robotic system
operations to explore another world and extend mission lifetime." Mars Exploration Rover
Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, will accept the
award for the team.
"On behalf of the many hundreds of scientists and engineers who designed, built and operate
these rovers, it is a great honor to accept this most prestigious award," Callas said. "It is
especially gratifying that this comes right as Opportunity is conducting one of the most
significant campaigns in the eight-and-a-half years since landing. We still are going strong, with
perhaps the most exciting exploration still ahead."
In its eighth year operating on Mars, Opportunity is surveying a crater-rim outcrop of layered
rock in search of clay minerals that could provide new information about a formerly wet
environment. Spirit worked for more than six years -- until 2010 -- 24 times longer than its
original three-month prime mission.
In just the past two months, Opportunity has driven about a third of a mile (more than 525
meters), extending its total overland travel distance to 21.76 miles (35 kilometers). Recent drives
along the inner edge of the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater have
brought the rover close to a layered outcrop in an area where clay minerals have been detected
from orbit. These minerals could offer evidence of ancient, wet conditions with less acidity than
the ancient, wet environments recorded at sites Opportunity visited during its first seven years on
Mars.
Opportunity's position overlooking 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater is about
5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers) from where Curiosity, NASA's next-generation Mars rover,
landed inside Gale Crater a month ago.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars
Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information about Opportunity and Spirit, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at
http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .
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Thursday, September 6, 2012
NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Guy Webster / D.C. Agle 818-354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwane.c.brown@nasa.gov
News release: 2012-279 Sept. 6, 2012
NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-279&cid=release_2012-279
PASADENA, Calif. -- After driving more than a football field's length since landing, NASA's
Mars rover Curiosity is spending several days preparing for full use of the tools on its arm.
Curiosity extended its robotic arm Wednesday in the first of six to 10 consecutive days of
planned activities to test the 7-foot (2.1-meter) arm and the tools it manipulates.
"We will be putting the arm through a range of motions and placing it at important 'teach points'
that were established during Earth testing, such as the positions for putting sample material into
the inlet ports for analytical instruments," said Daniel Limonadi of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and
science system. "These activities are important to get a better understanding for how the arm
functions after the long cruise to Mars and in the different temperature and gravity of Mars,
compared to earlier testing on Earth."
Since the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft placed Curiosity inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug.
5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT), the rover has driven a total of 358 feet (109 meters). The drives have
brought it about one-fourth of the way from the landing site, named Bradbury Landing, to a
location selected as the mission's first major science destination, Glenelg.
"We knew at some point we were going to need to stop and take a week or so for these
characterization activities," said JPL's Michael Watkins, Curiosity mission manager. "For these
checkouts, we need to turn to a particular angle in relation to the sun and on flat ground. We
could see before the latest drive that this looked like a perfect spot to start these activities."
The work at the current location will prepare Curiosity and the team for using the arm to place
two of the science instruments onto rock and soil targets. In addition, the activities represent the
first steps in preparing to scoop soil, drill into rocks, process collected samples and deliver
samples into analytical instruments.
Checkouts in the next several days will include using the turret's Mars Hand Lens Imager to
observe its calibration target and the Canadian-built Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer to read
what chemical elements are present in the instrument's calibration target.
"We're still learning how to use the rover. It's such a complex machine -- the learning curve is
steep," said JPL's Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory Project,
which built and operates Curiosity.
After the arm characterization activities at the current site, Curiosity will proceed for a few
weeks eastward toward Glenelg. The science team selected that area as likely to offer a good
target for Curiosity's first analysis of powder collected by drilling into a rock.
"We're getting through a big set of characterization activities that will allow us to give more
decision-making authority to the science team," said Richard Cook, Mars Science Laboratory
project manager at JPL.
Curiosity is one month into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments
to assess whether the selected study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for
microbial life. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl ,
http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl . You can follow the mission on
Facebook and on Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .
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Wednesday, September 5, 2012
NASA to Host Telecon About Curiosity Rover Progress
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
DC Agle / Guy Webster 818-393-9011/818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov / guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
News advisory: 2012-276b September 5, 2012
NASA to Host Telecon About Curiosity Rover Progress
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-276&cid=release_2012-276
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) on
Thursday, Sept. 6, to provide a status update on the Curiosity rover's mission to Mars' Gale Crater.
The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is one month into a two-year mission to investigate whether
conditions have been favorable for microbial life and preserving clues in the rocks about possible past
life.
Audio and visuals of the event will be streamed live online at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio and
www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .
Visuals will be available at the start of the event at: http://go.nasa.gov/curiositytelecon .
For more information about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl,
http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .
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Dawn has Departed the Giant Asteroid Vesta
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 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
News release: 2012-277 Sept. 5, 2012
Dawn Mission Status Report
Dawn has Departed the Giant Asteroid Vesta
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-277&cid=release_2012-277
PASADENA, Calif. -- Mission controllers received confirmation today that NASA's
Dawn spacecraft has escaped from the gentle gravitational grip of the giant asteroid
Vesta. Dawn is now officially on its way to its second destination, the dwarf planet
Ceres.
Dawn departed from Vesta at about 11:26 p.m. PDT on Sept. 4 (2:26 a.m. EDT on
Sept. 5). Communications from the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network
confirmed the departure and that the spacecraft is now traveling toward Ceres.
"As we respectfully say goodbye to Vesta and reflect on the amazing discoveries
over the past year, we eagerly look forward to the next phase of our adventure at
Ceres, where even more exciting discoveries await," said Robert Mase, Dawn project
manager, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Launched on Sept. 27, 2007, Dawn slipped into orbit around Vesta on July 15, 2011
PDT (July 16 EDT). Over the past year, Dawn has comprehensively mapped this
previously uncharted world, revealing an exotic and diverse planetary building
block. The findings are helping scientists unlock some of the secrets of how the solar
system, including our own Earth, was formed.
A web video celebrating Dawn's "greatest hits" at Vesta is available at
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=151669301 .
Two of Dawn's last looks at Vesta are also now available, revealing the creeping
dawn over the north pole.
Dawn spiraled away from Vesta as gently as it arrived. It is expected to pull into its
next port of call, Ceres, in early 2015.
Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for
overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and
built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for
Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National
Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. The
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .
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NASA to Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness, Climate
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 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
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov
News release: 2012-275 Sept. 5, 2012
NASA to Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness, Climate
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-275&cid=release_2012-275
PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot
to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these
variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.
The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper
Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the
ocean. The new data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA's Aquarius instrument
has been collecting from space since August 2011. Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
SPURS scientists aboard the research vessel Knorr leave Sept. 6 from the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and head toward a spot known as the Atlantic
surface salinity maximum, located halfway between the Bahamas and the western coast of North
Africa. The expedition also is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and the National Science Foundation.
The researchers will spend about three weeks on site deploying instruments and taking salinity,
temperature and other measurements, before sailing to the Azores to complete the voyage on Oct. 9.
They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most worrisome effects of climate
change -- the acceleration of Earth's water cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation
increases, altering the frequency, strength and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with far-
reaching implications for life on Earth.
"What if the drought in the U.S. Midwest became permanent? To understand whether that could
happen we must understand the water cycle and how it will change as the climate continues to
warm," said Raymond Schmitt, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole and principal investigator
for SPURS. "Getting that right is going to involve understanding the ocean, because the ocean is the
source of most of the water."
Oceanographers believe the ocean retains a better record of changes in precipitation than land, and
translates these changes into variations in the salt concentration of its surface waters. Scientists
studying the salinity records of the past 50 years say they already see the footprint of an increase in
the speed of the water cycle. The places in the ocean where evaporation has increased and rain has
become scarcer have turned saltier over time, while the spots that now receive more rain have
become fresher. This acceleration ultimately may exacerbate droughts and floods around the planet.
Some climate models, however, predict less dramatic changes in the global water cycle.
"With SPURS we hope to find out why these climate models do not track our observations of
changing salinities," said Eric Lindstrom, physical oceanography program scientist at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "We will investigate to what extent the observed salinity trends are a
signature of a change in evaporation and precipitation over the ocean versus the ocean's own
processes, such as the mixing of salty surface waters with deeper and fresher waters or the sideways
transport of salt."
To learn more about what drives salinity, the SPURS researchers will deploy an array of instruments
and platforms, including autonomous gliders, sensor-laden buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles.
Some will be collected before the research vessel heads to the Azores, but others will remain in place
for a year or more, providing scientists with data on seasonal variations of salinity.
Some of the devices used during SPURS to explore the Atlantic's saltiest spot will focus on the outer
edges of the study area, traveling for hundreds of miles and studying the broadest salinity features.
Other instruments will explore smaller areas nested inside the research site, focusing on smaller
fluxes of salt in the waters. The suite of ocean instruments will complement data from NASA's
salinity-sensing instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D)
observatory, and be integrated into real-time computer models that will help guide researchers to the
most interesting phenomena in the cruise area.
"We'll be able to look at lots of different scales of salinity variability in the ocean, some of which can
be seen from space, from a sensor like Aquarius," said David Fratantoni, a physical oceanographer
with Woods Hole and a member of the SPURS expedition. "But we're also trying to see variations in
the ocean that can't be resolved by current satellite technology."
The 2012 SPURS measurements in the North Atlantic will help scientists understand the behavior of
other high-salinity regions around the world. A second SPURS expedition in 2015 will investigate
low-salinity regions where there is a high input of freshwater, such as the mouth of a large river or
the rainy belts near the equator.
For more information on the SPURS expedition, visit: http://spurs.jpl.nasa.gov/SPURS .
For more information on Aquarius, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius .
Regular blog updates from the SPURS expedition will be posted at: http://go.nasa.gov/PuyO5q .
The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
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Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Curiosity Has Landed In Your Classroom! Free Educator Conference
Educator Conference Sept. 4, 2012
This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.
Curiosity Has Landed In Your Classroom!
Date: Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012 - 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Registration deadline: Sept. 21, 2012
Target audience: Educators, formal and informal
Location: Arizona State University Main Campus -- Memorial Union
Overview: Learn how to bring fascinating science and engineering concepts from NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, into your classroom during a free educator conference at Arizona State University! Special NASA Mars team guest presenters will share the latest news and discoveries from the Red Planet and education specialists will showcase hands-on activities to help educators extend their students' science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, learning.
A certificate for 6.5 professional development clock hours will be given for this conference. Conference participants will receive lesson plans, NASA materials and resources.
For more information and to register, go to http://marsed.asu.edu/curiosityhaslanded. Deadline to register is Sept. 21, 2012.
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at
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NASA Dawn Mission to Host "Hasta La Vesta" Google+ Hangout
Upcoming Event Sept. 4, 2012
NASA Dawn Mission to Host 'Hasta La Vesta' Google+ Hangout
Join NASA's Dawn mission at noon on Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012 for a Google+ Hangout featuring mission team members and fans as the spacecraft says hasta la vista to its host, asteroid Vesta, and sets its sights on the dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn has spent a phenomenal year orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta, gathering data close up and far away with its international payload of instruments. To celebrate Dawn's achievements and upcoming voyage to Ceres, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. will host a virtual Google+ Hangout, giving the public a chance to interact with Dawn scientists and engineers as they share mission stories and answer questions about Dawn's findings and future.
Members of the public are invited to submit questions in advance of the event by email, to dawnepo@gmail.com, or on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/dawn.mission and http://twitter.com/NASA_Dawn.
A Google+ account is required for participation. To join the Hasta La Vesta Google+ Hangout, visit http://bit.ly/dawnhangout at noon PDT on Sept. 8 and log in with your Google+ username and password.
To learn more about Dawn, the Hasta La Vesta Hangout and other ways to participate, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/hasta_la_vesta.asp.
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