JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Aircraft, Spacecraft Aid Atmospheric River Study NASA is part of CalWater 2015, a massive research effort to study atmospheric rivers this month. Atmospheric rivers are flows of tropical moisture across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast, where the moisture falls as rain or snow. One type of atmospheric river is called the Pineapple Express because it originates near Hawaii. Storms driven by atmospheric rivers produce about 40 percent of California's annual water supply, but also most of its major floods. NASA's ER-2 instrumented research aircraft is scheduled to fly later this week as part of a field campaign to study atmospheric rivers, short-lived weather events that carry a flood of moisture from the tropics to the U.S. West Coast. Current forecasts are predicting that northern California will receive several inches of rain from an atmospheric river storm on Thursday and Friday. CalWater 2015, a multiagency, interdisciplinary field campaign, is designed to improve understanding of when and how California ends up on the receiving end of an atmospheric river, and also how much rain these events can bring -- a crucial concern in the state's ongoing historic drought. "In California, we count on atmospheric rivers to deliver about 40 percent of our annual freshwater supply," said Duane Waliser, chief Earth scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and a member of the CalWater 2015 scientific steering team. "They also account for most of our major floods. It's crucial that we learn as much as we can about them to help support water managers' decisions and disaster preparedness." CalWater 2015 will run till about Feb. 27. During this period, when weather forecasters see a major atmospheric river event developing in the Pacific Ocean -- typically about five days before rain reaches the West Coast -- the ER-2 and three other research aircraft will fly through and above the storm while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's research ship, the Ronald H. Brown, makes complementary measurements from the ocean surface and NASA's ISS-RapidScat mission collects related data from its perch on the International Space Station. The ER-2 flies at about 65,000 feet (20 kilometers) -- above 94 percent of Earth's atmosphere. It will carry four scientific instruments designed and managed at NASA. "We're adding a unique remote sensing component to the campaign," said JPL's David Diner, principal investigator for AirMSPI, one of the onboard instruments. "It's exciting for us to coordinate with other aircraft that are flying at lower altitudes and with surface facilities, and to contribute the contextual view that we get from the high altitude." The four instruments are: -- AirMSPI, JPL's Airborne Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager, which observes both natural and polarized sunlight reflected from Earth at multiple viewing angles to study microscopic airborne particles, cloud cover and other factors related to weather. -- AVIRIS Classic, the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, an optical sensor that records upwelling light from Earth's surface and atmosphere. Also a JPL instrument, AVIRIS is used to identify and measure molecules and particles on Earth and in the air by the way they absorb and scatter light. -- CPL, the Cloud Physics Lidar, which studies clouds and aerosols by lidar, a detection system that is like radar but uses laser light instead of radio waves. Designed and operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, CPL catalogs and tracks particles in the atmosphere. Its deployment in CalWater 2015 also provides a unique opportunity to validate measurements by NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) instrument early in its operational lifetime. CATS was launched to the International Space Station on Jan. 10. -- HAMSR, JPL's High Altitude MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit) Sounding Radiometer, a microwave radiometer that collects observations that can be used to determine the temperature, water vapor and liquid water in clouds throughout the atmosphere, as well as the presence of precipitation. NASA's ISS-RapidScat mission, operated by JPL, is providing its observations of wind speed and direction over the Pacific to the researchers in near-real time. In return, the RapidScat science team will receive shipboard measurements of the same winds to help calibrate the RapidScat instrument and validate its observations. "It's a good collaboration because we happen to be looking at similar phenomena at the same time," said JPL's Ernesto Rodriguez, the RapidScat project scientist. CalWater 2015's research team includes representatives from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego; the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington; Colorado State University in Fort Collins; the Earth System Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado; and JPL. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. Besides the ER-2, the other research aircraft are a P-3 and a Gulfstream IV aircraft from NOAA and a Gulfstream I aircraft from the DOE. The ER-2 flies from its home base at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center facility in Palmdale, California; other research flights originate at McClellan Airfield in Sacramento. Ground-based instruments throughout the state are also collecting data.

 

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Upcoming Educator Workshop: The Design of Discovery

 

JPL EDUCATION / WORKSHOPS The Design of Discovery Date: March 7, 2015 Target Audience: K-12 educators Locations/Times: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California: 8:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. PT UCAR - Boulder, Colorado: 9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. MT Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas: 10:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. CT Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland: 11:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. ET For more information and to register, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/discovery/design_of_discovery.asp. The deadline to register is February 20. Overview: What does it take for scientists and engineers to work together and move fantastic ideas from dream to reality to meet the challenges of complex missions? Find out in the Discovery Program's fifth annual workshop with a special focus on the engineering solutions associated with space exploration. Be the first to learn a new guided-engineering, maker-based "design a mission" project to help students understand the relationship between scientific objectives and the engineering and design process. • Hear the latest on emerging science from the New Horizons mission as it begins to return images of Pluto -- after more than nine years of travel! • Follow the ion-propelled Dawn mission as it nears orbit around dwarf planet Ceres. • Learn how the MESSENGER mission -- after returning so much fantastic science data about Mercury -- will make a big bang once it runs out of fuel. Hands-on, standards-aligned science and engineering activities and multimedia interactives: •    For both K-12 and out-of-school time educators •    Break-out sessions at varying grade levels Resource materials: •    A flash drive containing mission-designed curriculum and activities for all grade levels with links to great online interactives. •    Posters, bookmarks, stickers and more! The cost of the workshop is $25. Lunch and snacks will be provided. Webinar Option: For those who cannot attend in person, the panel discussions will be streamed live and archived. See the workshop website for the link as the time gets closer. For a list of more upcoming educator workshops from NASA/JPL Education, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=387

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA Launches Groundbreaking Soil Moisture Mapper NASA successfully launched its first Earth satellite designed to collect global observations of the vital soil moisture hidden just beneath our feet. Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW Launch of NASA Soil Moisture Mapping Mission Set for Saturday NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission (SMAP) now is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California at 6:20 a.m. PST (9:20 a.m. EST) Saturday, Jan. 31. Read the full story Gravitational Waves from Early Universe Remain Elusive A joint analysis of data from Planck and the ground-based experiment BICEP2 has found no conclusive evidence of gravitational waves from the birth of our universe. Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW NASA TV Coverage Reset for Launch of SMAP Earth Mission NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission (SMAP) launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, now is scheduled for 6:20 a.m. PST (9:20 a.m. EST) Friday, Jan. 30, with a three-minute launch window. The launch of the United Launch Alliance/Delta II rocket was scrubbed Thursday due to a violation of upper-level wind constraints. Launch managers have initiated a 24-hour recycle. The weather forecast for this launch window shows a 90 percent chance of favorable conditions. NASA Television coverage of the launch Friday will begin at 4 a.m. PST. SMAP will provide high-resolution, space-based measurements of soil moisture and its state -- frozen or thawed -- a new capability that will allow scientists to better predict natural hazards of extreme weather, climate change, floods and droughts, and help reduce uncertainties in our understanding of Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles. The mission will map the entire globe every two to three days for at least three years and provide the most accurate and highest-resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained. The spacecraft's final circular polar orbit will be 426 miles (685 kilometers), at an inclination of 98.1 degrees. The spacecraft will orbit Earth once every 98.5 minutes and repeat the same ground track every eight days. For an updated schedule of prelaunch events and NASA TV coverage, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1xaYUzD For in-depth prelaunch, countdown and launch day coverage of the liftoff of SMAP aboard the Delta II rocket, go to: http://blogs.nasa.gov/smap For NASA TV schedules and video streaming information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv For more information about the SMAP mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/smap

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW Cassini Catches Titan Naked in the Solar Wind Researchers studying data from NASA's Cassini mission have observed that Saturn's largest moon, Titan, behaves much like Venus, Mars or a comet when exposed to the raw power of the solar wind. The observations suggest that unmagnetized bodies like Titan might interact with the solar wind in the same basic ways, regardless of their nature or distance from the sun. Titan is large enough that it could be considered a planet if it orbited the sun on its own, and a flyby of the giant moon in Dec. 2013 simulated that scenario, from Cassini's vantage point. The encounter was unique within Cassini's mission, as it was the only time the spacecraft has observed Titan in a pristine state, outside the region of space dominated by Saturn's magnetic field, called its magnetosphere. "We observed that Titan interacts with the solar wind very much like Mars, if you moved it to the distance of Saturn," said Cesar Bertucci of the Institute of Astronomy and Space Physics in Buenos Aires, who led the research with colleagues from the Cassini mission. "We thought Titan in this state would look different. We certainly were surprised," he said. The solar wind is a fast-flowing gale of charged particles that continually streams outward from the sun, flowing around the planets like islands in a river. Studying the effects of the solar wind at other planets helps scientists understand how the sun's activity affects their atmospheres. These effects can include modification of an atmosphere's chemistry as well as its gradual loss to space. Titan spends about 95 percent of the time within Saturn's magnetosphere. But during a Cassini flyby on Dec. 1, 2013, the giant moon happened to be on the sunward side of Saturn when a powerful outburst of solar activity reached the planet. The strong surge in the solar wind so compressed the sun-facing side of Saturn's magnetosphere that the bubble's outer edge was pushed inside the orbit of Titan. This left the moon exposed to, and unprotected from, the raging stream of energetic solar particles. Using its magnetometer instrument, which is akin to an equisitely sensitive compass, Cassini has observed Titan many times during the mission's decade in the Saturn system, but always within Saturn's magnetosphere. The spacecraft has not been able to detect a magnetic field coming from Titan itself. In its usual state, Titan is cloaked in Saturn's magnetic field. This time the influence of Saturn was not present, allowing Cassini's magnetometer to observe Titan as it interacted directly with the solar wind. The special circumstance allowed Bertucci and colleagues to study the shockwave that formed around Titan where the full-force solar wind rammed into the moon's atmosphere. At Earth, our planet's powerful magnetic field acts as a shield against the solar wind, helping to protect our atmosphere from being stripped away. In the case of Venus, Mars and comets -- none of which is protected by a global magnetic field -- the solar wind drapes around the objects themselves, interacting directly with their atmospheres (or in the comet's case, its coma). Cassini saw the same thing at Titan. Researchers thought they would have to treat Titan's response to the solar wind with a unique approach because the chemistry of the hazy moon's dense atmosphere is highly complex. But Cassini's observations of a naked Titan hinted at a more elegant solution. "This could mean we can use the same tools to study how vastly different worlds, in different parts of the solar system, interact with the wind from the sun," Bertucci said. Bertucci noted that the list of similarly unmagnetized bodies might include the dwarf planet Pluto, to be visited this year for the first time by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. "After nearly a decade in orbit, the Cassini mission has revealed once again that the Saturn system is full of surprises," said Michele Dougherty, principal investigator of the Cassini magnetometer at Imperial College, London. "After more than a hundred flybys, we have finally encountered Titan out in the solar wind, which will allow us to better understand how such moons maintain or lose their atmospheres." The new research is published today in the journal Geophysical Review Letters. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The magnetometer team is based at Imperial College, London, U.K. More information about Cassini: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Captures Best-Ever View of Dwarf Planet NASA's Dawn spacecraft has returned the sharpest images ever seen of the dwarf planet Ceres. Read the full story Building a Better Weather Forecast? SMAP May Help Soil moisture data from NASA's SMAP mission will open a path to improved weather forecasts. Read the full story Citizen Scientists Lead Astronomers to Mystery Objects in Space "Hmm, what's that?" Simply by asking the question, volunteers have led researchers to illuminate a little-known stage of massive star formation Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW SMAP Will Track a Tiny Cog That Keeps Cycles Spinning When you open the back of a fine watch, you see layer upon layer of spinning wheels linked by interlocking cogs, screws and wires. Some of the cogs are so tiny they're barely visible. Size doesn't matter -- what's important is that the cogs fit together well so the wheels keep turning smoothly. For centuries, scientists have thought of the Earth system as a series of cycles or interlocking wheels like the ones in a watch. It's a way to make sense of the movements of water and other essentials back and forth between the air and the land, ocean and soil or rock beneath them. In today's changing climate, some cycles are spinning faster or beginning to wobble. There's an urgent need to understand what is happening to the cogs that keep these cycles turning. The minuscule fraction of Earth's water lodged just beneath the land surface is a tiny cog that links the water cycle to two other fundamental Earth cycles: energy and carbon. "That linkage is what makes these three gears turn with a certain harmony," said Dara Entekhabi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Entekhabi is science team leader for NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission, scheduled to launch Jan. 29. Developed and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, SMAP will provide the most accurate information ever about this small but critical cog. You may have learned about the water cycle in school: Water falls from the sky to the land when it rains or snows, and rises from the land back to the sky when it heats up and evaporates. Your teacher may not have mentioned that water vapor isn't the only thing that rises. The heat energy that turned liquid water into vapor also rises, cooling Earth's surface. In fact, evaporating soil moisture is the main way that land sheds the solar energy it receives every day and thus is a major player in the energy cycle. "It's the first process to kick in when the surface heats up, and it continues as long as there is moisture in the soil that can evaporate," Entekhabi said. Evaporation gets rid of nearly half of the solar energy that reaches land, keeping our planet's temperature comfortable. If there's any moisture at all in soil, there's probably a plant growing there. That's why most evaporation from soil starts with a plant absorbing water through its roots. Plants need water for photosynthesis, their food-creating process. During photosynthesis they "sweat" -- or transpire -- water onto their leaves, where it evaporates. Besides using water and energy, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Over land, this is virtually the only natural way for carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. Soil moisture keeps this vital carbon highway open by enabling plants to continue growing. "If a plant has access to water, it happily carries on with photosynthesis," Entekhabi said. "If not, the plant shuts down, and eventually it wilts and dies." After SMAP launches, the new data it will provide are expected to help scientists answer some long-standing questions about what is likely to happen to these important Earth cycles in a changing climate. Entekhabi hopes to take advantage of the synergy available between SMAP and NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, which measures global carbon dioxide. "We have talked a lot with the OCO-2 scientists about how we can use simultaneous measurements to solve the puzzle of how plants respond to soil moisture and how the carbon cycle and the water cycle are linked," he said. "If we get that linkage right, we will reduce the uncertainty in future climate projections and know more about how terrestrial plants are going to act in the future." For more about SMAP, see: http://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://www.nasa.gov/smap/ SMAP will be the last of five NASA Earth science launches within 12 months. NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet. For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

 

DAY IN REVIEW Hilltop Panorama Marks Mars Rover's 11th Anniversary A panorama from one of the highest elevations that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached in its 11 years on Mars includes the U.S. flag at the summit. Read the full story Rosetta Comet 'Pouring' More Water Into Space There has been a significant increase in the amount of water "pouring" out of the Rosetta mission's comet. Read the full story

 

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JPL News - Day in Review

DAY IN REVIEW NASA, Microsoft Collaboration Will Allow Scientists to 'Work on Mars' NASA and Microsoft have teamed up to develop software called OnSight, a new technology that will enable scientists to work virtually on Mars using wearable technology called Microsoft HoloLens. Developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, OnSight will give scientists a means to plan and, along with the Mars Curiosity rover, conduct science operations on the Red Planet. "OnSight gives our rover scientists the ability to walk around and explore Mars right from their offices," said Dave Lavery, program executive for the Mars Science Laboratory mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It fundamentally changes our perception of Mars, and how we understand the Mars environment surrounding the rover." OnSight will use real rover data and extend the Curiosity mission's existing planning tools by creating a 3-D simulation of the Martian environment where scientists around the world can meet. Program scientists will be able to examine the rover's worksite from a first-person perspective, plan new activities and preview the results of their work firsthand. "We believe OnSight will enhance the ways in which we explore Mars and share that journey of exploration with the world," said Jeff Norris, JPL's OnSight project manager. Until now, rover operations required scientists to examine Mars imagery on a computer screen, and make inferences about what they are seeing. But images, even 3-D stereo views, lack a natural sense of depth that human vision employs to understand spatial relationships. The OnSight system uses holographic computing to overlay visual information and rover data into the user's field of view. Holographic computing blends a view of the physical world with computer-generated imagery to create a hybrid of real and virtual. To view this holographic realm, members of the Curiosity mission team don a Microsoft HoloLens device, which surrounds them with images from the rover's Martian field site. They then can stroll around the rocky surface or crouch down to examine rocky outcrops from different angles. The tool provides access to scientists and engineers looking to interact with Mars in a more natural, human way. "Previously, our Mars explorers have been stuck on one side of a computer screen. This tool gives them the ability to explore the rover's surroundings much as an Earth geologist would do field work here on our planet," said Norris. The OnSight tool also will be useful for planning rover operations. For example, scientists can program activities for many of the rover's science instruments by looking at a target and using gestures to select menu commands. The joint effort to develop OnSight with Microsoft grew from an ongoing partnership to investigate advances in human-robot interaction. The JPL team responsible for OnSight specializes in systems to control robots and spacecraft. The tool will assist researchers in better understanding the environment and workspace of robotic spacecraft -- something that can be quite challenging with their traditional suite of tools. JPL plans to begin testing OnSight in Curiosity mission operations later this year. Future applications may include Mars 2020 rover mission operations, and other applications in support of NASA's journey to Mars. JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, and built the project's Curiosity rover. Learn more about NASA's journey to Mars at: http://www.nasa.gov/mars

 

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