NASA Study Shows Role of Melt in Arctic Sea Ice Loss

Feature Nov. 09, 2010

NASA Study Shows Role of Melt in Arctic Sea Ice Loss

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-379&cid=release_2010-379

A NASA analysis of satellite data has quantified, for the first time, the amount of older and
thicker "multiyear" sea ice lost from the Arctic Ocean due to melting.

Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued
disappearance of older "multiyear" sea ice that survives more than one summer melt season.
Some scientists suspected that this loss was due entirely to wind pushing the ice out of the Arctic
Basin -- a process that scientists refer to as "export." In this study, Ron Kwok and Glenn
Cunningham at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used a suite of satellite
data to clarify the relative role of export versus melt within the Arctic Ocean.

Kwok and Cunningham show that between 1993 and 2009, a significant amount of multiyear ice
-- 1,400 cubic kilometers (336 cubic miles) -- was lost due to melt, not export.

"The paper shows that there is indeed melt of old ice within the Arctic basin and the melt area
has been increasing over the past several years," Kwok said. "The story is always more
complicated -- there is melt as well as export -- but this is another step in calculating the mass
and area balance of the Arctic ice cover."

The results have implications for understanding how Arctic sea ice gets redistributed, where melt
occurs in the Arctic Ocean, and how the ocean, ice and atmosphere interact as a system to
affect Earth's climate. The study was published in October 2010 in Geophysical Research
Letters.

Scientists track the annual cycle of Arctic sea ice coverage as it melts through the summer to
reach a minimum extent each September, before refreezing through fall and winter. Much of
that ice is seasonal, meaning that it forms and melts within the year.

But multiyear ice that survives more than one season has also been declining, as noted in
previous work by Joey Comiso of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who
shows a loss of about 10 percent per decade since the beginning of the satellite record in 1979.
Scientists want to know where this loss is occurring.

"The decline of the multiyear ice cover of the last several decades has not been quantitatively
explained," Kwok said.

To investigate the loss of multiyear ice, Kwok and Cunningham looked at a 17-year span of data
from 1993 to 2009 from a range of polar-observing satellites and instruments, including NASA's
Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat); the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat); the
Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR); and the European Space Agency's
European Remote Sensing (ERS)-1 and -2 satellites. Some instruments track ice coverage,
while others track motion and concentration.

The team collected satellite images and tracked pixels of multiyear ice from April 1, prior to the
onset of seasonal melt, and into the summer. Pixels that deviated away from images of the ice
edge were considered lost to melt.

The team compared summertime melt of multiyear ice in the Beaufort Sea with estimates of ice
lost from the Arctic basin through the Fram Strait -- a major passage through which ice can exit
the Arctic Ocean. The comparison revealed how much multiyear ice was lost to export and how
much was lost to melt.

They found that over the 17-year period, an area of 947,000 square kilometers (365,639 square
miles), or about 32 percent of the decline in multiyear sea ice area, was lost in the Beaufort Sea
due to melt.

A similar calculation using thickness estimates from NASA's ICESat from 2004 to 2009 show a
volume loss of 1,400 cubic kilometers (336 cubic miles), or about 20 percent of the total loss by
volume.

How and where multiyear ice is lost has impacts on the Arctic system. For example, more loss
by melt means more freshwater remains in local Arctic waters rather than being transported
southward.

"These results also show that thick multiyear sea ice is not immune to melt in the Pacific sector
of the Arctic Ocean in today's climate," Kwok said.

The additional freshwater from melt in the Pacific sector, which encompasses the area of study,
could contribute to the freshening of the Beaufort Gyre and potentially influence circulation, but
the degree of that influence remains uncertain.

Not all of the multiyear ice loss is accounted for, however. Ice loss through Fram Strait and from
melt from 2005 to 2008 accounts for just 52 percent of total ice loss. The team suggests that
melt in other Arctic regions and outflow through other passages besides Fram Strait could
account for the difference.

Since its launch in 1999, QuikScat, developed and managed by JPL, has advanced Earth
science research and helped improve environmental predictions using measurements of global
radar backscatter from Earth's ocean, land and ice surfaces. QuikScat data help scientists better
understand and predict the processes that drive our climate, such as ocean circulation and the
global water cycle. In addition to its numerous weather forecasting and climate research
applications, QuikScat data also help monitor changes in Arctic sea ice and icebergs, as well as
snow and soil moisture changes on land. For more on QuikScat, visit:
http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm .

For more information, see:

Missing 'Ice Arches' Contributed to 2007 Arctic Ice Loss
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20100218.html

NASA Satellite Reveals Dramatic Arctic Ice Thinning
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/icesat-20090707r.html

Satellites Show Arctic Literally on Thin Ice
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_thinice.html

Written by Kathryn Hansen
NASA's Earth Science News Team

-end-

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

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Cool Star is a Gem of a Find

Feature Nov. 09, 2010

Cool Star is a Gem of a Find

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-377&cid=release_2010-377

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has eyed its first cool brown
dwarf: a tiny, ultra-cold star floating all alone in space.

WISE is scanning the whole sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of not just brown
dwarfs but also asteroids, stars and galaxies. It has sent millions of images down to Earth,
in which infrared light of different wavelengths is color-coded in the images.

"The brown dwarfs jump out at you like big, fat, green emeralds," said Amy Mainzer, the
deputy project scientist of WISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif. Mainzer, who makes jewelry in her spare time, explained that the brown dwarfs
appear like green gems in WISE images because the methane in their atmospheres absorbs
the infrared light that has been coded blue, and because they are too faint to give off the
infrared light that is color-coded red. The only color left is green.

Like Jupiter, brown dwarfs are made up of gas -- a lot of it in the form of methane,
hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia. These gases would be deadly to humans at the
concentrations found around brown dwarfs. And they wouldn't exactly smell pretty.

"If you could bottle up a gallon of this object's atmosphere and bring it back to Earth,
smelling it wouldn't kill you, but it would stink pretty badly -- like rotten eggs with a hint
of ammonia," said Mainzer.

Mainzer and other members of the WISE team are already accumulating a quarry of
brown dwarf candidates similar to this one. Brown dwarfs have masses somewhere
between those of a star and a planet. They start out like stars as collapsing balls of gas,
but they lack the mass to fuse atoms together at their core and shine with starlight. As
time goes on, these lightweights cool off, until they can only be seen in infrared light.

There could be many such objects lurking in the neighborhood of our sun, but
astronomers know of only a handful so far. WISE is expected to find hundreds, including
the coolest and closest of all.

To scientists, brown dwarfs represent the perfect laboratories for studying planet-like
atmospheres.

"They're a great test of our understanding of atmospheric physics of planets, since they
don't have solid surfaces, and there's no big, bright sun to get in the way," said co-author
Michael Cushing, a postdoctoral fellow at JPL.

WISE's new brown dwarf is named WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9 for its location in
the sky. It is estimated to be 18 to 30 light-years away and is one of the coolest brown
dwarfs known, with a temperature of about 600 Kelvin, or 620 degrees Fahrenheit. That's
downright chilly as far as stars go. The fact that this brown dwarf jumped out of the data
so easily and so quickly -- it was spotted 57 days into the survey mission -- indicates that
WISE will discover many, many more. The discovery was confirmed by follow-up
observations at the University of Virginia's Fan Mountain telescope, the Large Binocular
Telescope in southeastern Arizona, and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna
Kea, Hawaii. The results are in press at the Astrophysical Journal.

Read more about how NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and WISE are hunting down the
coldest brown dwarfs here http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-210 .

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The
mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the
Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing
take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information is online at
http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu .

-end-

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

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Sensor on Mars Rover to Measure Radiation Environment

Feature Nov. 09, 2010

SENSOR ON MARS ROVER TO MEASURE RADIATION ENVIRONMENT

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-376&cid=release_2010-376

About eight months before the NASA rover Curiosity touches down on Mars in August 2012,
the mission's science measurements will begin much closer to Earth.

The Mars Science Laboratory mission's Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, will monitor
naturally occurring radiation that can be unhealthful if absorbed by living organisms. It will do so
on the surface of Mars, where there has never before been such an instrument, as well as during
the trip between Mars and Earth.

RAD's measurements on Mars will help fulfill the mission's key goals of assessing whether
Curiosity's landing region on Mars has had conditions favorable for life and for preserving
evidence about life. This instrument also will do an additional job. Unlike any of the nine others
in this robotic mission's science payload, RAD has a special task and funding from the part of
NASA that is planning human exploration beyond Earth orbit. It will aid design of human
missions by reducing uncertainty about how much shielding from radiation future astronauts will
need. The measurements between Earth and Mars, as well as the measurements on Mars, will
serve that purpose.

"No one has fully characterized the radiation environment on the surface of another planet. If we
want to send humans there, we need to do that," said RAD Principal Investigator Don Hassler of
the Boulder, Colo., branch of the Southwest Research Institute.

Whether the first destination for human exploration beyond the moon is an asteroid or Mars, the
travelers will need protection from the radiation environment in interplanetary space. Hassler
said, "The measurements we get during the cruise from Earth to Mars will help map the
distribution of radiation throughout the solar system and be useful in mission design for wherever
we send astronauts."

RAD will monitor high-energy atomic and subatomic particles coming from the sun, from distant
supernovas and from other sources. These particles constitute the radiation that could be harmful
to any microbes near the surface of Mars or to astronauts on a Mars mission. Galactic cosmic
rays, coming from supernova explosions and other events extremely far from our own solar
system, are a variable shower of charged particles. In addition, the sun itself spews electrons,
protons and heavier ions in "solar particle events" fed by solar flares and ejections of matter from
the sun's corona. Astronauts might need to move into havens with extra shielding on an
interplanetary spacecraft or on Mars during solar particle events.

Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere provide effective shielding for our home planet against the
possible deadly effects of galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events. Mars, though, lacks a
global magnetic field and has only about one percent as much atmosphere as Earth. Just to find
high-enough radiation levels on Earth for checking and calibrating RAD, the instrument team
needed to put it inside major particle-accelerator research facilities in the United States, Europe,
Japan and South Africa.

An instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which reached Mars in 2001, assessed radiation
levels above the Martian atmosphere. Current estimates of the radiation environment at the
planet's surface rely on modeling of how the thin atmosphere affects the energetic particles, but
uncertainty in the modeling remains large. "A single energetic particle hitting the top of the
atmosphere can break up into many particles -- a cascade of lower-energy particles that might be
more damaging to life than a single high-energy particle," Hassler noted.

The 1.7-kilogram (3.8-pound) RAD instrument has an upward-pointing, wide-angle telescope
with detectors for charged particles with masses up to that of iron. It can also detect secondary
neutrons coming from both the Mars atmosphere above and Mars surface material below.
Hassler's international RAD team includes experts in instrument design, astronaut safety,
atmospheric science, geology and other fields.

Southwest Research Institute, in Boulder and in San Antonio, Texas, and Christian Albrechts
University, in Kiel, Germany, built RAD with funding from the NASA Exploration Systems
Mission Directorate and Germany's national aerospace research center: Deutschen Zentrum für
Luft- und Raumfahrt. The team assembling and testing the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., installed RAD onto Curiosity last
month for the late-2011 launch.

RAD measurements during the trip from Earth to Mars will enable correlations with instruments
on other spacecraft that monitor solar particle events and galactic cosmic rays in Earth's
neighborhood, then will yield data about the radiation environment farther from Earth.

Once on Mars, the rover's prime mission will last a full Martian year -- nearly two Earth years. A
one-time set of measurements by RAD would not suffice for determining the radiation
environment on the surface, because radiation levels vary on time frames both longer than a year
and shorter than an hour. Operational planning for Curiosity anticipates that RAD will record
measurements for 15 minutes of every hour throughout the prime mission.

Radiation levels probably make the surface of modern Mars inhospitable for microbial life. The
measurements from RAD will feed calculations of how deeply a possible future robot on a life-
detection mission might need to dig or drill to reach a microbial safe zone. For assessing whether
the surface radiation environment could have been hospitable for microbes in Mars' distant past,
researchers will combine RAD's measurements with estimates of how the activity of the sun and
the atmosphere of Mars have changed in the past few billion years.

"The primary science goal of Curiosity is to determine whether its landing site is, or ever was, a
habitable environment, a place friendly to life," said JPL's Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project
scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory. "That involves looking both for conditions that would
support life as well as for those that would be hazardous to life or its chemical predecessors.
Natural, high-energy radiation is just such a hazard, and RAD will give us the first look at the
present level of this radiation and help us to better estimate radiation levels throughout Mars'
history."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science
Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information
about the mission, see http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

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

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Flight of the Comet

Feature Nov. 05, 2010

Flight of the Comet

The full version of this story with accompanying video and images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-375&cid=release_2010-375

A new video clip (available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/epoxi/20101105/epoxi20101105.mov) was compiled from images taken by NASA's EPOXI
mission spacecraft during its flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010. During the encounter, the spacecraft and comet whisked
past each other at a speed of 12.3 kilometers per second (27,560
miles per hour). The spacecraft came within about 700 kilometers (435 miles) of the comet's nucleus at the time of closest
approach.

"While future generations should have the opportunity to truly
explore comets, this flyby gives us an excellent preview of what
they will get to enjoy," said EPOXI principal investigator
Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park. "Hartley 2 exceeded all our expectations in not only scientific
value but in its stark majestic beauty."

The video clip of the flyby is comprised of 40 frames taken from
the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution Instrument during the
encounter. The first image was taken at about 37 minutes before
the time of closest approach at a distance of about 27,350
kilometers (17,000 miles). The last image was taken 30 minutes
after closest approach at a distance of 22,200 kilometers
(13,800 miles). The spacecraft was able to image nearly 50
percent of the comet's illuminated surface in detail.

The EPOXI mission's flyby of comet Hartley 2 was only the fifth
time in history that a comet nucleus has been imaged, and the
first time in history that two comets have been imaged with the
same instruments and same spatial resolution.

EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already "in
flight" Deep Impact spacecraft to explore distinct celestial
targets of opportunity. The name EPOXI itself is a combination
of the names for the two extended mission components: the
extrasolar planet observations, called Extrasolar Planet
Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of
comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation
(DIXI). The spacecraft will continue to be referred to as "Deep
Impact."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the
EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The University of Maryland, College Park, is home to
the mission's principal investigator, Michael A'Hearn. Drake
Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is
the science lead for the mission's extrasolar planet
observations. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For more information about EPOXI visit http://epoxi.umd.edu/ .

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

2010-375

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NASA EPOXI Flyby Reveals New Insights Into Comet Features

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

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

Lee Tune 301-405-4679
University of Maryland, College Park
ltune@umd.edu

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-373 Nov. 4, 2010

NASA EPOXI Flyby Reveals New Insights Into Comet Features

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-373&cid=release_2010-373

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft successfully flew past comet Hartley 2 at
7 a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EDT) Thursday, Nov. 4. Scientists say initial images from the flyby provide new
information about the comet's volume and material spewing from its surface.

"Early observations of the comet show that, for the first time, we may be able to connect activity to
individual features on the nucleus," said EPOXI Principal Investigator Michael A'Hearn of the
University of Maryland, College Park. "We certainly have our hands full. The images are full of great
cometary data, and that's what we hoped for."

EPOXI is an extended mission that uses the already in-flight Deep Impact spacecraft. Its encounter
phase with Hartley 2 began at 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT) on Nov. 3, when the spacecraft began to
point its two imagers at the comet's nucleus. Imaging of the nucleus began one hour later.

"The spacecraft has provided the most extensive observations of a comet in history," said Ed Weiler,
associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in
Washington. "Scientists and engineers have successfully squeezed world-class science from a re-
purposed spacecraft at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers of a new science project."

Images from the EPOXI mission reveal comet Hartley 2 to have 100 times less volume than comet
Tempel 1, the first target of Deep Impact. More revelations about Hartley 2 are expected as analysis
continues.

Initial estimates indicate the spacecraft was about 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the comet at the
closest-approach point. That's almost the exact distance that was calculated by engineers in advance
of the flyby.

"It is a testament to our team's skill that we nailed the flyby distance to a comet that likes to move
around the sky so much," said Tim Larson, EPOXI project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "While it's great to see the images coming down, there is still work to
be done. We have another three weeks of imaging during our outbound journey."

The name EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: the
Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2,
called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI). The spacecraft has retained the name "Deep
Impact." In 2005, Deep Impact successfully released an impactor into the path of comet Tempel 1.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the
EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about EPOXI, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and http://epoxi.umd.edu/ .

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov .

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Herschel's Hidden Talent: Digging Up Magnified Galaxies

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-372 Nov. 4, 2010

HERSCHEL'S HIDDEN TALENT: DIGGING UP MAGNIFIED GALAXIES

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-372&cid=release_2010-372

PASADENA, Calif. -- It turns out the Herschel Space Observatory has a trick up its sleeve. The
telescope, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions, has proven to
be excellent at finding magnified, faraway galaxies. Like little kids probing patches of dirt for
insects, astronomers can use these new cosmic magnifying lenses to study galaxies that are
hidden in dust.

"I was surprised to learn that Herschel is so good at finding these cosmic lenses," said Asantha
Cooray of the University of California, Irvine. "Locating new lenses is an arduous task that
involves slogging through tons of data. With Herschel, we can find a lot of them much more
efficiently." Cooray is a co-author of a paper about the discovery, appearing in the Nov. 5 issue
of the journal Science. The lead author is Mattia Negrello of the Open University in the United
Kingdom.

A cosmic magnifying lens occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bends light from a
more distant galaxy into a warped and magnified image. Sometimes, a galaxy is so warped that it
appears as a ring -- an object known as an Einstein ring after Albert Einstein who first predicted
the phenomenon, referred to as gravitational lensing. The effect is similar to what happens when
you look through the bottom of a soda bottle or into a funhouse mirror.

These lenses are incredibly powerful tools for studying the properties of distant galaxies as well
as the mysterious stuff -- dark matter and dark energy -- that makes up a whopping 96 percent of
our universe (see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-272 ).

"With these lenses, we can do cosmology and study galaxies that are too distant and faint to be
seen otherwise," said Cooray.

Cooray and a host of international researchers made the initial discovery using Herschel.
Launched in May 2009, this space mission is designed to see longer-wavelength light than that
we see with our eyes -- light in the far-infrared and submillimeter portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum. Scanning Herschel images of thousands of galaxies, the researchers noticed five never-
before-seen objects that jumped out as exceptionally bright.

At that time, the galaxies were suspected of being magnified by cosmic lenses, but careful and
extensive follow-up observations were required. Numerous ground-based telescopes around the
world participated in the campaign, including the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's
Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and three telescopes in Hawaii: the W.M. Keck
Observatory, the California Institute of Technology's Submillimeter Observatory, and the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Submillimeter Array.

The results showed that all five of the bright galaxies were indeed being magnified by
foreground galaxies. The galaxies are really far away -- they are being viewed at a time when the
universe was only two to four billion years old, less than a third of its current age.

The Herschel astronomers suspect that they are just scratching the surface of a much larger
population of magnified galaxies to be uncovered. The images studied so far make up just two
percent of the entire planned survey, a program called the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz
Large Area Survey, or Herschel-ATLAS.

"The fact that this Herschel team saw five lensed galaxies is very exciting," said Paul Goldsmith,
the U.S. project scientist for Herschel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
"This means that we can probably pick out hundreds of new lensed galaxies in the Herschel
data."

The five galaxies are young and bursting with dusty, new stars. The dust is so thick, the galaxies
cannot be seen at all with visible-light telescopes. Herschel can see the faint warmth of the dust,
however, because it glows at far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. Because the galaxies
are being magnified, astronomers can now dig deeper into these dusty, exotic places and learn
more about what makes them tick.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by
consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel
Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL contributed mission-enabling
technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center,
part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information and images are online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu ,
http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html .

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

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NASA Mission Successfully Flies by Comet Hartley 2

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 818-354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

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

Lee Tune 301-405-4679
University of Maryland, College Park
ltune@umd.edu

MISSION STATUS REPORT: 2010-371 Nov. 4, 2010

NASA Mission Successfully Flies by Comet Hartley 2

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-371&cid=release_2010-371

PASADENA, CALIF. – NASA's EPOXI mission successfully flew by comet Hartley 2 at about 7
a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EDT) today, and the spacecraft has begun returning images. Hartley 2 is the fifth
comet nucleus visited by a spacecraft.

Scientists and mission controllers are currently viewing never-before-seen images of Hartley 2
appearing on their computer terminal screens.

"The mission team and scientists have worked hard for this day," said Tim Larson, EPOXI project
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's good to see Hartley 2 up
close."

Mission navigators are working to determine the spacecraft's closest approach distance. Preliminary
estimates place the spacecraft close to the planned-for 700 kilometers (435 miles). Eight minutes after
closest approach, at 6:59:47 a.m. PDT ( 9:59:47 a.m. EDT), the spacecraft's high-gain antenna was
pointed at Earth and began downlinking vital spacecraft health and other engineering data stored
aboard the spacecraft's onboard computer during the encounter. About 20 minutes later, the first
images of the encounter made the 37-million-kilometer (23-million-mile) trip from the spacecraft to
NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, Calif., appearing moments later on the
mission's computer screens.

"We are all holding our breath to see what discoveries await us in the observations near closest
approach," said EPOXI principal investigator Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland,
College Park.

A post-encounter news conference will be held at 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT) in the von Karman
auditorium at JPL. It will be carried live on NASA TV. Downlink and schedule information is
online at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv . The event will also be carried live on
http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already "in-flight" Deep Impact spacecraft to explore
distinct celestial targets of opportunity. The name EPOXI itself is a combination of the names for the
two extended mission components: the extrasolar planet observations, called Extrasolar Planet
Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep
Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI). The spacecraft has retained the name "Deep Impact."

JPL manages the EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The
University of Maryland is home to the mission's principal investigator, Michael A'Hearn. Drake
Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is the science lead for the
mission's extrasolar planet observations. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For more information about EPOXI visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and http://epoxi.umd.edu/ .

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The Man Behind Comet Hartley 2

Feature Nov. 02, 2010

The Man Behind Comet Hartley 2

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-368&cid=release_2010-368

Over the last 40 years, Malcolm Hartley has done just about every possible job for Siding Spring
Observatory's UK Schmidt telescope in New South Wales, Australia. The British-born, Scottish-
educated Hartley has logged time as the 1.2 meter (3.9 foot) telescope's observer, processor, copier,
hypersensitization expert, and quality controller.

On the afternoon of March 16, 1986, Hartley's job was that last one -- quality control. In that role, he
was the first to view each 36-by-36 centimeter (14-by-14 inch) photographic glass plate after it had
been exposed to the night sky. Checking for imperfections on one of the previous evening's 60-
minute illuminations, Hartley came upon something that wasn't supposed to be there.

"Back then, the observations came in as negatives -- stars and other objects in the sky appeared black
on a clear background," said Hartley. "I noticed a dark haze around a trail. Trails indicate something that
is traveling fast through the sky, but asteroids don't have a haze. So I thought it might be a comet."

Hartley double-checked his sighting a couple of nights later, then submitted his findings to the Minor
Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. A couple of days after that, the center issued a brief circular
informing the astronomical world of the discovery of comet Hartley 2.

"I was very happy for a couple of days," said Hartley."Every scientist wants to discover something and
it's a fantastic feeling. There was even a mention in the local paper, the Coonabarabran Times."

On the world's stage, having a comet named after you is certainly unique. But not so much in the small
town of Coonabarabran -- which they say comes from the local Aboriginal word for 'inquisitive person.'
It is the closest town to the Warrumbungle Range and Siding Spring Mountain and the Anglo-Australian
Observatory.

"There are several other colleagues at Siding Springs who have discovered comets," Hartley said.
"Robert McNaught has discovered over 50, and I don't think he's ever been mentioned in the Times.
It's a rural farming community, and while there are amateur astronomers in the area, finding comets is
not really a big deal."

Hartley went on to discover or co-discover 10 comets with the UK Schmidt telescope, and with each,
he would feel an initial rush of excitement. But in 2002, the Anglo-Australian Observatory retrofitted
its Schmidt to perform multi-object spectroscopy, essentially halting all astrophotography with the
telescope and ending any future possibility for comet discovery. Hartley, who never was directly
tasked with finding comets, continued to work the telescope's galaxy surveys. Comets, it seemed, had
become little more than a historical footnote in his career. That is, until he got a call from a science
magazine.

"At the beginning of last year, a reporter emailed and said that the EPOXI mission changed its target
and now it was going to go to Hartley 2," said Hartley. "I didn't even know Hartley 2 was one of the two comets under consideration."

Hartley 2 was definitely on NASA's very short list of potential comet targets. The only problem with
Hartley 2 was it would take more than two years of extra deep-space cruising to get there. So the only
other candidate on the short list, the similar-sized comet Boethin, was selected. That is, until it
disappeared. Scientists theorize that comet Boethin had broken into non-traceable fragments. This
situation left NASA's short list as a list of one -- comet Hartley 2.

So Malcolm Hartley did what anybody would do who has a namesake comet that was just selected as a
target for a NASA comet flyby, after the previous selection had disappeared. He thanked the reporter,
logged off his computer and wondered what "his comet" would look like. Whatever that was going to
be, Hartley was sure he would find out from the comfort of his living room. Then NASA called.

"I've never been involved with a space mission," said Hartley. "I had never visited JPL or any NASA
facility for that matter. So this is all new to me. I am very grateful you have asked me to come and
witness this. It is an experience very few people have had before."

Exactly once before -- of all the approximately 3,800 known comets, four have been imaged closeup
by spacecraft. And of those four, only Swiss astronomer Paul Wild (pronounced "Vilt") was alive to see
his comet visited (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=1). And while Wild witnessed
the launch of NASA 's Stardust spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 1999, he watched the close-up
images of his comet from the comfort of his living room in 2003. (Wild passed away in 2008). Hartley
will see his comet from JPL's mission control room.

"When I discovered the comet in 1986, I never envisaged that I would come to the location where the
mission was run, to see it up-close and personal," said Hartley, who was a boy when JPL was starting
up.

Not surprisingly, the 63-year-old astrophotographer also has some thoughts on the mission to his
comet.

"You went to Tempel 1, but then you reconfigured the spacecraft for the extended mission," said
Hartley. "That's pretty clever stuff that you've done. That's the kind of science that's really interesting.
To be able to do something extra on top of the successful mission you mounted at Tempel 1, it's really
special."

EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already "in-flight" Deep Impact spacecraft to explore
distinct celestial targets of opportunity. The term EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two
extended mission components: the Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and
the Hartley 2 flyby, called the Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI). For more information about
EPOXI, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and http://epoxi.umd.edu.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the EPOXI mission for
NASA.

-end-

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

2010-368

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Mars Rovers Mission Using Cloud Computing

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2010-366 Nov. 2, 2010

MARS ROVERS MISSION USING CLOUD COMPUTING

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-366&cid=release_2010-366

PASADENA, Calif. -- The project team that built and operates the Mars rovers Spirit and
Opportunity has become the first NASA space mission to use cloud computing for daily mission
operations.

Cloud computing is a way to gain fast flexibility in computing ability by ordering capacity on
demand -- as if from the clouds -- and paying only for what is used. NASA's Mars Exploration
Rover Project moved to this strategy last week for the software and data that the rovers' flight
team uses to develop daily plans for rover activities. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., which manages the project, gained confidence in cloud computing from
experience with other uses of the technology, including public participation sites about Mars
exploration.

"This is a change to thinking about computer capacity and data storage as a commodity like
electricity, or even the money in your bank account," said JPL's John Callas, rover project
manager. "You don't keep all your money in your wallet. Instead you go to a nearby ATM and
get cash when you need it. Your money is safe, and the bank can hold as much or as little of the
money as you want. Data is the same way: You don't need to have it on you all the time. It can
be safely stored elsewhere and you can get it anytime via an Internet connection.

"When we need more computing capacity, we don't need to install more servers if we can rent
more capacity from the cloud for just the time we need it. This way we don't waste electricity
and air conditioning with servers idling waiting to be used, and we don't have to worry about
hardware maintenance and operating system obsolescence."

Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for what were planned as three-month
missions. Bonus, extended missions have continued for more than six years. Opportunity is
currently active, requiring daily activity plans by a team of engineers at JPL, and scientists at
many locations in North America and Europe. Spirit has been silent since March 2010 and is
believed to be in a low-power hibernation mode for the Martian winter.

"The rover project is well suited for cloud computing," said Khawaja Shams, a JPL software
engineer supporting the project. "It has a widespread user community acting collaboratively.
Cloud enables us to deliver the data to each user from nearby locations for faster reaction time."
Also, the unexpected longevity of the mission means the volume of data used has outgrown the
systems originally planned for handling and sharing data, which makes the virtually limitless
capacity of cloud computing attractive.

JPL collaborated with the cloud team of Amazon.com Inc., Seattle, to plan and implement the
use of cloud computing in the Mars Exploration Rover Project's daily operations. JPL developed
the rover project's activity-planning software, called Maestro.

"We have worked closely with multiple cloud vendors since 2007 to learn the best ways to gain
the advantages of cloud computing," said Tomas Soderstrom, chief technology officer for the
JPL Office of the Chief Information Officer. "To implement JPL CIO Jim Rinaldi's vision of
renting instead of buying capacity, we pragmatically look past the hype about cloud computing
to find the practical, cost-efficient real mission applications. The Mars Exploration Rover
project's use of clouds is one example of this results-oriented partnership. More will follow."

In support of the federal Open Government Initiative, which increases public access to data
collected by the federal government, JPL collaborated with the cloud team at Microsoft Corp.,
Redmond, Wash., to launch the "Be a Martian" website in November 2009. The site enables the
public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Mars maps and take part in Mars research
tasks. At this site -- http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov -- more than 54,000 people have signed up to
be "Martian citizens" and analyze data.

For another early use of cloud computing, JPL worked with the cloud team at Google Inc.,
Mountain View, Calif. The Google cloud served a project in which JPL and computer science
students at the University of California, San Diego, developed an educational application
enabling fifth- and sixth-graders to tag labels onto images from Mars spacecraft.

In addition to establishing a private cloud and working with Amazon, Google and Microsoft,
JPL has also collaborated with other vendors of public cloud computing. Soderstrom said, "We
defined a 'cloud-oriented architecture' to use clouds as an extension of our own resources and to
run the computing and storage where it is most appropriate for each application."

The extended missions of Spirit and Opportunity have provided a resource for testing
innovations during an active space mission for possible use in future missions. New software
uploads giving the rovers added autonomy have been one example, and cloud computing is
another. JPL is currently building and testing NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, for launch in
late 2011 in the Mars Science Laboratory mission. This rover will land on Mars in August 2012.

Shams said, "The experience we gain using cloud computing for planning Opportunity's activities
may be valuable when Curiosity reaches Mars, too."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars
Exploration Rover Project and the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. For more information about these projects, see
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

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

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NASA to Host Live Events for November 4 Comet Encounter

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011

EVENT ADVISORY: 2010-362A Nov. 1, 2010

NASA TO HOST LIVE EVENTS FOR NOVEMBER 4 COMET ENCOUNTER

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-362A&cid=release_2010-362A

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will hold a series of news and educational events about the EPOXI
mission's close encounter with comet Hartley 2, scheduled to occur at approximately 7 a.m. PDT (10
a.m. EDT) on Thursday, Nov. 4. The spacecraft will provide the most extensive observations of a
comet in history.

Tuesday, Nov. 2:
The public is invited to a free lecture on Nov. 2 by the discoverer of comet Hartley 2, Malcolm
Hartley. The lecture will take place at JPL's von Karman Auditorium at 7 p.m. PDT. Hartley,
a resident of Coonabarabran, Australia, discovered the comet on March 15, 1986. More
information on the lecture, called "NASA's Going to My Comet," is online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.cfm?year=2010&month=11 . The event will
also be carried live at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 , with question-and-answer capability.

Thursday, Nov. 4:
Live coverage beginning at 6:30 a.m. PDT (9:30 a.m. EDT) from mission control at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will be available online on NASA Television's
Media Channel. Coverage includes closest approach, an educational segment, and the return
of close-approach images. A post-flyby news briefing is planned for 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT). For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

Activities will also be carried live on one of JPL's Ustream channels at:
http://www.ustream.tv/user/NASAJPL2 .

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

EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already "in-flight" Deep Impact spacecraft to explore
distinct celestial targets of opportunity. The term EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two
extended mission components: the Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh),
and the Hartley 2 flyby, called the Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI). For more
information about EPOXI, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and http://epoxi.umd.edu .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the EPOXI mission
for NASA.

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