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
Jane Platt 818-354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov
David E. Steitz 202-358-1730
NASA Headquarters, Washington
david.steitz@nasa.gov
News release: 2013-227 July 19, 2013
NASA Advanced Technology Concepts Selected for Study
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-227&cid=release_2013-227
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has selected 12 proposals, including two from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for study under Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, which aims to turn science fiction into fact.
The selected proposals include a wide range of imaginative concepts, including 3-D printing of biomaterials, such as arrays of cells; using galactic rays to map the insides of asteroids; and an "eternal flight" platform that could hover in Earth's atmosphere, potentially providing better imaging, Wi-Fi, power generation and other applications.
"NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program invites innovators everywhere -- industry, academia, NASA centers, other agencies -- to propose bold, visionary ideas," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington. "We're working together to transform the future of aerospace while investigating new technologies that may one day benefit our new technology economy and our lives here on Earth."
NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate chose this year's Phase I proposals based on their potential to transform future aerospace missions by enabling either entirely new missions or breakthroughs in future aerospace capabilities, accelerating progress toward NASA's goals.
NIAC Phase I awards are about $100,000 to conduct nine-month initial definition and analysis studies of a concept. If the basic feasibility studies are successful, proposers can apply for Phase II funding of as much as $500,000 for two more years of concept maturation.
"These new Phase I selections include potential breakthroughs for Earth and space science, diverse operations and the potential for new paths that expand human civilization and commerce into space," said NIAC Program Executive Jay Falker.
NASA solicits visionary, long-term concepts for technological maturation based on their potential value to the agency's future space missions and operational needs. The projects are chosen through a peer-review process that evaluates their innovative potential, technical approach, and benefits for study in a timely manner. All are very early in development and typically years from implementation.
NASA's early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers and citizen inventors from across the nation will provide technological dividends and help maintain America's leadership in the global technology economy.
The portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas selected for NIAC awards represent multiple technology areas, including in-space propulsion, human habitation, science instruments, materials for use in space, and exploring other diverse technology paths needed to meet NASA's strategic goals.
NIAC is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in NASA's future missions. These competitively awarded projects are creating new technological solutions for NASA and America's future.
The two JPL proposals are:
* Two-Dimensional Planetary Surface Landers -- Hamid Hemmati,, principal investigator
http://www.nasa.gov/content/two-dimensional-planetary-surface-landers/#.Uel9auDOsX5
* Transformers for Extreme Environments -- Adrian Stoica, principal investigator
http://www.nasa.gov/content/transformers-for-extreme-environments/#.UemCbeDOsX5
For a complete list of the selected proposals and more information about the NIAC, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/niac .
For more information about NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech .
The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
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Friday, July 19, 2013
NASA Advanced Technology Concepts Selected for Study
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Reports Detail Mars Rover Clues to Atmosphere's Past
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
Nancy Neal Jones 301-286-0039
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov
News release: 2013-226 July 18, 2013
Reports Detail Mars Rover Clues to Atmosphere's Past
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-226&cid=release_2013-226
PASADENA, Calif. – A pair of new papers report measurements of the Martian atmosphere's composition by NASA's Curiosity rover, providing evidence about loss of much of Mars' original atmosphere.
Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of laboratory instruments inside the rover has measured the abundances of different gases and different isotopes in several samples of Martian atmosphere. Isotopes are variants of the same chemical element with different atomic weights due to having different numbers of neutrons, such as the most common carbon isotope, carbon-12, and a heavier stable isotope, carbon-13.
SAM checked ratios of heavier to lighter isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the carbon dioxide that makes up most of the planet's atmosphere. Heavy isotopes of carbon and oxygen are both enriched in today's thin Martian atmosphere compared with the proportions in the raw material that formed Mars, as deduced from proportions in the sun and other parts of the solar system. This provides not only supportive evidence for the loss of much of the planet's original atmosphere, but also a clue to how the loss occurred.
"As atmosphere was lost, the signature of the process was embedded in the isotopic ratio," said Paul Mahaffy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. He is the principal investigator for SAM and lead author of one of the two papers about Curiosity results in the July 19 issue of the journal Science.
Other factors also suggest Mars once had a much thicker atmosphere, such as evidence of persistent presence of liquid water on the planet's surface long ago even though the atmosphere is too scant for liquid water to persist on the surface now. The enrichment of heavier isotopes measured in the dominant carbon-dioxide gas points to a process of loss from the top of the atmosphere -- favoring loss of lighter isotopes -- rather than a process of the lower atmosphere interacting with the ground.
Curiosity measured the same pattern in isotopes of hydrogen, as well as carbon and oxygen, consistent with a loss of a substantial fraction of Mars' original atmosphere. Enrichment in heavier isotopes in the Martian atmosphere has previously been measured on Mars and in gas bubbles inside meteorites from Mars. Meteorite measurements indicate much of the atmospheric loss may have occurred during the first billion years of the planet's 4.6-billion-year history. The Curiosity measurements reported this week provide more precise measurements to compare with meteorite studies and with models of atmospheric loss.
The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape, but NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), will do so. "The current pace of the loss is exactly what the MAVEN mission now scheduled to launch in November of this year is designed to determine," Mahaffy said.
The new reports describe analysis of Martian atmosphere samples with two different SAM instruments during the initial 16 weeks of the rover's mission on Mars, which is now in its 50th week. SAM's mass spectrometer and tunable laser spectrometer independently measured virtually identical ratios of carbon-13 to carbon-12. SAM also includes a gas chromatograph and uses all three instruments to analyze rocks and soil, as well as atmosphere.
"Getting the same result with two very different techniques increased our confidence that there's no unknown systematic error underlying the measurements," said Chris Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is the lead scientist for the tunable laser spectrometer and the lead author for one of the two papers. "The accuracy in these new measurements improves the basis for understanding the atmosphere's history."
Curiosity landed inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012 Universal Time (on Aug. 5 PDT). The rover this month began a drive of many months from an area where it found evidence for a past environment favorable for microbial life, toward a layered mound, Mount Sharp, where researchers will seek evidence about how the environment changed.
More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .
You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .
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NASA Interplanetary Probes to Take Pictures of Earth From Space
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.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
News release: 2013-225 July 18, 2013
NASA Interplanetary Probes to Take Pictures of Earth From Space
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-225&cid=release_2013-225
PASADENA, Calif. -- Two NASA spacecraft, one studying the Saturn system, the other observing Mercury, are maneuvering into place to take pictures of Earth on July 19 and 20.
The image taken from the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini spacecraft will occur between 2:27 and 2:42 PDT (5:27 and 5:42 p.m. EDT, or 21:27 and 21:47 UTC) Friday, July 19. Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles (nearly 1.5 billion kilometers) away from Earth. NASA is encouraging the public to look and wave in the direction of Saturn at the time of the portrait and share their pictures via the Internet.
The Cassini Earth portrait is part of a more extensive mosaic -- or multi-image picture -- of the Saturn system as it is backlit by the sun. The viewing geometry highlights the tiniest of ring particles and will allow scientists to see patterns within Saturn's dusty rings. Processing of the Earth images is expected to take a few days, and processing of the full Saturn system mosaic will likely take several weeks.
Inspired in part by the Cassini team's plans to obtain a picture of Earth, scientists reexamined the planned observations of NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. They realized Earth is coincidentally expected to appear in some images taken in a search for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20. Those images will be taken at 4:49 a.m., 5:38 a.m. and 6:41 a.m. PDT (7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. EDT, or 11:49, 12:38, and 13:41 UTC) on both days. Parts of Earth not illuminated in the Cassini images, including all of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, will appear illuminated in the MESSENGER images. MESSENGER's images also will take a few days to process prior to release.
Details on how to find Saturn in the sky and participate in the event are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/waveatsaturn .
The public can share pictures by using the hashtag #waveatsaturn on Twitter, or uploading pictures to the event's Flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/wave_at_saturn/ .
The event's Facebook page is: http://bit.ly/waveatsaturn .
Cassini mission scientists also will be participating in a live Ustream show on Friday from 2 to 2:30 p.m. PDT (5 to 5:30 p.m. EDT): http://www.ustream.com/nasajpl2 .
For more information about the two NASA spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/messenger .
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Friday, July 12, 2013
Disks Don't Need Planets to Make Patterns
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
Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov
News release: 2013-221 July 12, 2013
Disks Don't Need Planets to Make Patterns
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-221&cid=release_2013-221
Many young stars known to host planets also possess disks containing dust and icy grains, particles produced by collisions among asteroids and comets also orbiting the star. These debris disks often show sharply defined rings or spiral patterns, features that could signal the presence of orbiting planets. Astronomers study the disk features as a way to better understand the physical properties of known planets and possibly uncover new ones.
But a new study by NASA scientists sounds a cautionary note in interpreting rings and spiral arms as signposts for new planets. Thanks to interactions between gas and dust, a debris disk may, under the right conditions, produce narrow rings on its own -- no planets needed.
"When the mass of gas is roughly equal to the mass of dust, the two interact in a way that leads to clumping in the dust and the formation of patterns," said lead researcher Wladimir Lyra, a Sagan Fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "In essence, the gas shepherds the dust into the kinds of structures we would expect to be see if a planet were present."
A paper describing the findings was published in the July 11 issue of Nature.
The warm dust in debris disks is easy to detect at infrared wavelengths, but estimating the gas content of disks is a much greater challenge. As a result, theoretical studies tend to focus on the role of dust and ice particles, paying relatively little attention to the gas component. Yet icy grains evaporate and collisions produce both gas and dust, so at some level all debris disks must contain some amount of gas.
"All we need to produce narrow rings and other structures in our models of debris disks is a bit of gas, too little for us to detect today in most actual systems," said co-author Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Here's how it works. When high-energy ultraviolet light from the central star strikes a clump of dust and ice grains, it drives electrons off the particles. These high-speed electrons then collide with and heat nearby gas.
The rising gas pressure changes the drag force on the orbiting dust, causing the clump to grow and better heat the gas. This interaction, which the astronomers refer to as the photoelectric instability, continues to cascade. Clumps grow into arcs, rings and oval features in tens of thousands of years, a relatively short time compared to other forces at work in a young solar system.
A model developed by Lyra and Kuchner shows the process at work.
"We were fascinated to watch this structure form in the simulations," Lyra said. "Some of the rings begin to oscillate, and at any moment they have the offset appearance of dust rings we see around many stars, such as Fomalhaut."
In addition, dense clumps with many times the dust density elsewhere in the disk also form during the simulation. When a clump in a ring grows too dense, the ring breaks into arcs and the arcs gradually shrink until only a single compact clump remains. In actual debris disks, some of these dense clumps could reflect enough light to be directly observable.
"We would detect these clumps as bright moving sources of light, which is just what we're looking for when we search for planets," adds Kuchner.
The researchers conclude that the photoelectric instability provides a simple and plausible explanation for many of the features found in debris disks, making the job of planet-hunting astronomers just a little bit harder.
An abstract for the Nature paper, titled "Sharp Eccentric Rings in Planetless Hydrodynamical Models of Debris Disks," is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12281 .
The Sagan Fellowship Program is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Its purpose is to advance the scientific and technical goals of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, managed for NASA by JPL. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
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Thursday, July 11, 2013
NASA's OPALS to Beam Data From Space Via Laser
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
Stephanie L. Smith 818-393-5464
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
slsmith@jpl.nasa.gov
Joshua Buck 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
jbuck@nasa.gov
News release: 2013-218 July 11, 2013
NASA's OPALS to Beam Data From Space Via Laser
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-218&cid=release_2013-218
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will use the International Space Station to test a new communications technology that could dramatically improve spacecraft communications, enhance commercial missions and strengthen transmission of scientific data.
The Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), an optical technology demonstration experiment, could improve NASA's data rates for communications with future spacecraft by a factor of 10 to 100. OPALS has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It is scheduled to launch to the space station later this year aboard a SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply capsule on the company's Falcon 9 rocket.
"OPALS represents a tangible stepping stone for laser communications, and the International Space Station is a great platform for an experiment like this," said Michael Kokorowski, OPALS project manager at JPL. "Future operational laser communication systems will have the ability to transmit more data from spacecraft down to the ground than they currently do, mitigating a significant bottleneck for scientific investigations and commercial ventures."
OPALS will be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station and communicate with a ground station in Wrightwood, Calif., a mountain town near Los Angeles.
"It's like aiming a laser pointer continuously for two minutes at a dot the diameter of a human hair from 30 feet away while you're walking," explained OPALS systems engineer Bogdan Oaida of JPL.
The OPALS instrument was built at JPL and is slated to fly on the Dragon capsule in late 2013. The mission is expected to run 90 days after installation on the station.
The OPALS Project Office is based at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
For more information about OPALS, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/10MMPDO .
For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station .
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Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Upcoming Educator Workshop Compares Mars and Earth
Educator Workshop July 10, 2013
This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.
Imagine Mars! Workshop
Date: Saturday, July 20, 2013, 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Target audience: Formal and informal educators for grades 3-8
Location: NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif.
Overview: This standards-based workshop will focus on the similarities and differences in Mars' and Earth's geology. Compare and contrast Earth and Mars images to discover how landscapes evolved. Learn how to make the traditional baking soda and vinegar volcano activity into a geologic and mathematical gold mine! Learn how and why we explore Mars. Engage your students in present and future missions to Mars. This workshop will be restricted to 25 participants so register early
Please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot. For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115
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Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Science Team Outlines Goals for NASA's 2020 Mars Rover
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
Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
News release: 2013-217 July 9, 2013
Science Team Outlines Goals For NASA's 2020 Mars Rover
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-217&cid=release_2013-217
WASHINGTON -- The rover NASA will send to Mars in 2020 should look for signs of past life, collect samples for possible future return to Earth, and demonstrate technology for future human exploration of the Red Planet, according to a report provided to the agency.
The 154-page document was prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team, which NASA appointed in January to outline scientific objectives for the mission. The team, composed of 19 scientists and engineers from universities and research organizations, proposed a mission concept that could accomplish several high-priority planetary science goals and be a major step in meeting President Obama's challenge to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.
"Crafting the science and exploration goals is a crucial milestone in preparing for our next major Mars mission," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "The objectives determined by NASA with the input from this team will become the basis later this year for soliciting proposals to provide instruments to be part of the science payload on this exciting step in Mars exploration."
NASA will conduct an open competition for the payload and science instruments. They will be placed on a rover similar to Curiosity, which landed on Mars almost a year ago. Using Curiosity's design will help minimize mission costs and risks and deliver a rover that can accomplish the mission objectives.
The 2020 mission proposed by the Science Definition Team would build upon the accomplishments of Curiosity and other Mars missions. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers, along with several orbiters, found evidence Mars has a watery history. Curiosity recently confirmed that past environmental conditions on Mars could have supported living microbes. According to the Science Definition Team, looking for signs of past life is the next logical step.
The team's report details how the rover would use its instruments for visual, mineralogical and chemical analysis down to microscopic scale to understand the environment around its landing site and identify biosignatures, or features in the rocks and soil that could have been formed biologically.
"The Mars 2020 mission concept does not presume that life ever existed on Mars," said Jack Mustard, chairman of the Science Definition Team and a professor at the Geological Sciences at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "However, given the recent Curiosity findings, past Martian life seems possible, and we should begin the difficult endeavor of seeking the signs of life. No matter what we learn, we would make significant progress in understanding the circumstances of early life existing on Earth and the possibilities of extraterrestrial life."
The measurements needed to explore a site on Mars to interpret ancient habitability and the potential for preserved biosignatures are identical to those needed to select and cache samples for future return to Earth. The Science Definition Team is proposing the rover collect and package as many as 31 samples of rock cores and soil for a later mission to bring back for more definitive analysis in laboratories on Earth. The science conducted by the rover's instruments would expand our knowledge of Mars and provide the context needed to make wise decisions about whether to return the samples to Earth.
"The Mars 2020 mission will provide a unique capability to address the major questions of habitability and life in the solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "This mission represents a major step towards creating high-value sampling and interrogation methods, as part of a broader strategy for sample returns by planetary missions."
Samples collected and analyzed by the rover will help inform future human exploration missions to Mars. The rover could make measurements and technology demonstrations to help designers of a human expedition understand any hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate how to collect carbon dioxide, which could be a resource for making oxygen and rocket fuel. Improved precision landing technology that enhances the scientific value of robotic missions also will be critical for eventual human exploration on the surface.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages NASA's Mars Exploration Program for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
The complete Science Definition Team report is available online at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/m2020/ .
For more information about NASA's Mars programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars .
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Monday, July 8, 2013
NASA Discusses Mars 2020 Plans in July 9 Teleconference
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
Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Media advisory: 2013-214b July 8, 2013
NASA Discusses Mars 2020 Plans in July 9 Teleconference
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-214&cid=release_2013-214
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, July 9 to provide details about a report that will help define science objectives for the agency's next Mars rover.
The report, prepared by the Mars 2020 Science Definition Team (SDT) NASA appointed in January, is an early, crucial step in developing the mission and the rover's prime science objectives.
The teleconference participants are:
-- John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, Washington
-- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Jack Mustard, SDT chair and professor of geological sciences, Brown University, Providence. R.I.
-- Lindy Elkins-Tanton, SDT member and director of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Washington
The Mars 2020 Science Definition Team report will be posted an hour before the teleconference at:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/m2020/ .
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio . The telecon and graphics will also be streamed on the Web at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .
Graphics for the teleconference will be posted online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mars/telecon20130709
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Radio Bursts Discovered From Beyond our Galaxy
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
Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov
News Release: 2013-216 July 8, 2013
Radio Bursts Discovered From Beyond our Galaxy
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-216&cid=release_2013-216
Astronomers, including a team member from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have detected the first population of radio bursts known to originate from galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. The sources of the light bursts are unknown, but cataclysmic events, such as merging or exploding stars, are likely the triggers.
A radio burst is a quick surge of light from a point on the sky, made up of longer wavelengths in the radio portion of the light spectrum. A single radio burst was detected about six years ago, but researchers were unclear about whether it came from within or beyond our galaxy.
The new radio-burst detections -- four in total -- are from billions of light-years away, erasing any doubt that the phenomenon is real. The discovery, described in the July 4 issue of the journal Science, comes from an international team that used the Parkes Observatory in Australia.
"Short radio bursts are really tricky to identify," explained Sarah Burke Spolaor of JPL. "Our team had to search 11 months of data covering a large sky area to find them."
Spolaor developed the software used to seek single pulses in the radio data and pick out genuine signals from local interference sources -- such as cell phones, spark plugs and aircraft. This amounted to an enormous and complex computational task.
Dan Thornton, lead author of the new study from England's University of Manchester and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, said, "The radio bursts last for just a few milliseconds and the farthest one that we detected was 11 billion light-years away."
The findings open the door to studying an entirely new class of eruptive cosmic events and can also help with cosmology mysteries, for example, about the nature of matter in the universe.
Our sky is full of flares and bursts of varying natures. For instance, gamma-ray bursts are thought to occur when stars collapse into black holes. They are routinely detected by a network of telescopes on the ground and in space, including NASA's Swift and Fermi. When one telescope in the network detects a burst, it can notify others to quickly slew to the target for coordinated observations.
The newfound radio bursts, while likely of a different origin than gamma-ray bursts, also consist of light waves generated by powerful events happening at great distances. Researchers would like to develop systems similar to the gamma-ray burst networks of telescopes to follow up quickly on radio bursts, but this is more challenging because radio waves are slowed by gas in space. Time is needed to process the radio observations and tease out the short-lived bursts.
On the other hand, the fact that radio waves are impeded as they travel through space to reach us offers benefits. By studying how the radio waves have been slowed, scientists can better understand baryonic matter, the material that gets in the way. Baryonic matter is what makes up people and planets and everything you see. The rest of the universe consists of mysterious substances called dark matter and dark energy.
Exactly what is triggering the release of the radio waves is unknown. Theories include colliding neutron stars or black holes; evaporating black holes; and stellar explosions called supernovae. The new data do not fit nicely with any of these scenarios, leaving the scientists perplexed.
Further scans for radio bursts using the Parkes Observatory are ongoing. Researchers are also using other telescopes to search for and characterize these events. For instance, the V-Fastr project, developed in part at JPL, is currently running on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array, an international network of telescopes. It will enable scientists to localize a burst's origin to a precise location in a distant host galaxy.
Other institutions participating in this study are: Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Germany; the INAF-Cagliari Astronomical Observatory and the Cagliari Observatory and University, Italy; Swinburne University of Technology, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics and Curtin University, all in Australia; and West Virginia University, Morgantown.
JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for NASA.
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Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Long-Running Jason-1 Ocean Satellite Takes Final Bow
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Julien Watelet 011-33-6-88-06-11-48
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, Paris, France
Julien.watelet@cnes.fr
News release: 2013-213 July 3, 2013
Long-Running Jason-1 Ocean Satellite Takes Final Bow
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-213&cid=release_2013-213
PASADENA, Calif. – The curtain has come down on a superstar of the satellite oceanography world that played the "Great Blue Way" of the world's ocean for 11-1/2 years. The successful joint NASA and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) Jason-1 ocean altimetry satellite was decommissioned this week following the loss of its last remaining transmitter.
Launched Dec. 7, 2001, and designed to last three to five years, Jason-1 helped create a revolutionary 20-plus-year climate data record of global ocean surface topography that began in 1992 with the launch of the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon satellite. For more than 53,500 orbits of our planet, Jason-1 precisely mapped sea level, wind speed and wave height for more than 95 percent of Earth's ice-free ocean every 10 days. The mission provided new insights into ocean circulation, tracked our rising seas and enabled more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts.
"Jason-1 has been a resounding scientific, technical and international success," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission met all of its requirements, performed an extended mission and demonstrated how a long-term climate data record should be established from successively launched satellites. Since launch, it has charted nearly 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) of rise in global sea levels, a critical measure of climate change and a direct result of global warming. The Jason satellite series provides the most accurate measure of this impact, which is felt all over the globe."
During parts of its mission, Jason-1 flew in carefully coordinated orbits with both its predecessor Topex/Poseidon and its successor, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, launched in 2008. These coordinated orbit periods, which lasted about three years each, cross-calibrated the satellites, making possible a 20-plus-year unbroken climate record of sea level change. These coordination periods also doubled data coverage.
Combined with data from the European Space Agency's Envisat mission, which also measured sea level from space, these data allow scientists to study smaller-scale ocean circulation phenomena, such as coastal tides, ocean eddies, currents and fronts. These small-scale features are thought to be responsible for transporting and mixing heat and other properties, such as nutrients and dissolved carbon dioxide, within the ocean.
"Jason-1 was an exemplary and multi-faceted altimeter mission and contributed so much to so many scientific disciplines," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, CNES president in Paris. "Not only did Jason-1 extend the precise climate record established by Topex/Poseidon, it made invaluable observations for mesoscale ocean studies on its second, interleaved orbit. Even from its 'graveyard' orbit, Jason-1 continued to make unprecedented new observations of the Earth's gravity field, with precise measurements right till the end."
The in-orbit Jason-2 mission, operated by the meteorological agencies of the United States and Europe (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and EUMETSAT, respectively) in collaboration with NASA and CNES, is in good health and continues to collect science and operational data. This same U.S./European team is preparing to launch the next satellite in the series, Jason-3, in March 2015.
Contact was lost with the Jason-1 satellite on June 21 when it was out of visibility of ground stations. At the time of the last contact, Jason-1 and its instruments were healthy, with no indications of any alarms or anomalies. Subsequent attempts to re-establish spacecraft communications from U.S. and French ground stations were unsuccessful. Extensive engineering operations undertaken to recover downlink communications also were unsuccessful.
After consultation with the spacecraft and transmitter manufacturers, it was determined a non-recoverable failure with the last remaining transmitter on Jason-1 was the cause of the loss of contact. The spacecraft's other transmitter experienced a permanent failure in September 2005. There now is no remaining capability to retrieve data from the Jason-1 spacecraft.
On July 1, mission controllers commanded Jason-1 into a safe hold state that reinitialized the satellite. After making several more unsuccessful attempts to locate a signal, mission managers at CNES and NASA decided to proceed with decommissioning Jason-1. The satellite was then commanded to turn off its magnetometer and reaction wheels. Without these attitude control systems, Jason-1 and its solar panels will slowly drift away from pointing at the sun and its batteries will discharge, leaving it totally inert within the next 90 days. The spacecraft will not reenter Earth's atmosphere for at least 1,000 years.
"Like its predecessor Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1 provided one of the most comprehensive pictures of changes in the tropical Pacific Ocean, including the comings and goings of El Nino and La Nina events," said Lee-Lueng Fu, Jason-1 project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "These Pacific Ocean climate cycles are responsible for major shifts in sea level, ocean temperatures and rainfall every two to five years and can sometimes be so large that worldwide weather patterns are affected. Jason-1 data have been instrumental in monitoring and predicting these ever-changing cycles."
In the spring of 2012, based on concern over the limited redundancy of Jason-1's aging control systems, NASA and CNES moved the satellite into its planned final "graveyard" orbit, depleted its extra fuel and reconfigured the mission to make observations that will improve our knowledge of Earth's gravity field over the ocean, in addition to delivering its oceanographic data products.
The first full 406-day marine gravity mission was completed on June 17. The resulting data have already led to the discovery of numerous small seamounts, which are underwater mountains that rise above the deep-sea floor. The data also have significantly increased the resolution of Earth's gravity field over the ocean, while increasing our knowledge of ocean bathymetry, which is the underwater depth of the ocean floor.
JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason-1 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. CNES manages the French portion of the mission.
For more information on Jason-1, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com .
The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
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