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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

NASA's Deep Impact Spacecraft Eyes Comet ISON

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

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

News release: 2013-047 Feb. 5, 2013

NASA's Deep Impact Spacecraft Eyes Comet ISON

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-047&cid=release_2013-047

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has acquired its first images of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The images were taken by the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution Imager over a 36-hour period on Jan. 17 and 18, 2013, from a distance of 493 million miles (793 million kilometers). Many scientists anticipate a bright future for comet ISON; the spaceborne conglomeration of dust and ice may put on quite a show as it passes through the inner solar system this fall.

"This is the fourth comet on which we have performed science observations and the farthest point from Earth from which we've tried to transmit data on a comet," said Tim Larson, project manager for the Deep Impact spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The distance limits our bandwidth, so it's a little like communicating through a modem after being used to DSL. But we're going to coordinate our science collection and playback so we maximize our return on this potentially spectacular comet."

Deep Impact has executed close flybys of two comets – Tempel 1 and Hartley 2 – and performed scientific observations on two more – comet Garradd and now ISON. The ISON imaging campaign is expected to yield infrared data, and light curves (which are used in defining the comet's rotation rate) in addition to visible-light images. A movie of comet ISON was generated from initial data acquired during this campaign. Preliminary results indicate that although the comet is still in the outer solar system, more than 474 million miles (763 million kilometers) from the sun, it is already active. As of Jan. 18, the tail extending from ISON's nucleus was already more than 40,000 miles (64,400 kilometers) long.

Long-period comets like ISON are thought to arrive from the solar system's Oort cloud, a giant spherical cloud of icy bodies surrounding our solar system so far away its outer edge is about a third of the way to the nearest star (other than our sun). Every once in a while, one of these loose conglomerations of ice, rock, dust and organic compounds is disturbed out of its established orbit in the Oort cloud by a passing star or the combined gravitational effects of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. With these gravitational nudges, so begins a comet's eons-long, arching plunge toward the inner solar system.

ISON was discovered on Sept. 21, 2012, by two Russian astronomers using the International Scientific Optical Network's 16-inch (40-centimeter) telescope near Kislovodsk. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, based at JPL, has plotted its orbit and determined that the comet is more than likely making it first-ever sweep through the inner solar system. Having not come this way before means the comet's pristine surface has a higher probability of being laden with volatile material just spoiling for some of the sun's energy to heat it up and help it escape. With the exodus of these clean ices could come a boatload of dust, held in check since the beginnings of our solar system. This released gas and dust is what is seen on Earth as comprising a comet's atmosphere (coma) and tail.

ISON will not be a threat to Earth – getting no closer to Earth than about 40 million miles on Dec. 26, 2013. But stargazers will have an opportunity to view the comet's head and tail before and after its closest approach to the sun -- if the comet doesn't fade early or break up before reaching the sun.

Launched in January 2005, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft traveled about 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to the vicinity of comet Tempel 1. On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft deployed an impactor that was essentially "run over" by the nucleus of Tempel 1 on July 4. Sixteen days after comet encounter, the Deep Impact team placed the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly past Earth in late December 2007. This extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft culminated in the successful flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010. In January of 2012, the spacecraft performed, from a distance, an imaging campaign on comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd).

To date, Deep Impact has traveled about 4.39 billion miles (7.06 billion kilometers) in space.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Deep Impact mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.
For more information about Deep Impact, visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact .

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Monday, February 4, 2013

NASA to Host Feb. 7 Media Telecon on Asteroid Flyby

Thursday, January 31, 2013

NASA Essay Contest Examines Missions to Icy Worlds

Essay Contest Jan. 31, 2013

NASA Essay Contest Examines Missions to Icy Worlds

NASA is inviting U.S. students in grades 5-12 to participate in an essay contest about proposed missions to explore Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa.

To enter, students must describe in 500 words or fewer why one of the proposed missions to these icy worlds is the most interesting of the bunch. Winning essays will be posted on a NASA website, and winners and their classes will be invited to participate in a video conference or teleconference with NASA scientists.

The proposed missions include exploring Titan with an orbiter and balloon and investigating Europa with a lander. Both missions would have science instruments to study their subjects -- an exciting prospect for astrobiologists. Students are encouraged to include details of the science instruments they might include on these spacecraft to help with key investigations.

The deadline to enter the Titan & Europa essay contest is February 28, 2013. Questions can be sent to titaneuropa@jpl.nasa.gov.

To learn more about the contest, proposed missions and icy moons, visit http://icyworlds.jpl.nasa.gov/contest/. Videos about astrobiology, Titan and Europa can be found at http://icyworlds.jpl.nasa.gov/contest/videos/.

This contest is sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, with participation from the Titan Astrobiology team and the Astrobiology of Icy Worlds team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Good luck!
The Titan and Icy Worlds NASA Astrobiology Institute Education & Public Outreach Teams
titaneuropa@jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA's Cassini Watches Storm Choke on Its Own Tail

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

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

News feature: 2013-040 Jan. 31, 2013

NASA's Cassini Watches Storm Choke on Its Own Tail

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-040&cid=release_2013-040

Call it a Saturnian version of the Ouroboros, the mythical serpent that bites its own tail. In a new paper that provides the most detail yet about the life and death of a monstrous thunder-and-lightning storm on Saturn, scientists from NASA's Cassini mission describe how the massive storm churned around the planet until it encountered its own tail and sputtered out. It is the first time scientists have observed a storm consume itself in this way anywhere in the solar system.

"This Saturn storm behaved like a terrestrial hurricane – but with a twist unique to Saturn," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, who is a co-author on the new paper in the journal Icarus. "Even the giant storms at Jupiter don't consume themselves like this, which goes to show that nature can play many awe-inspiring variations on a theme and surprise us again and again."

Earth's hurricanes feed off the energy of warm water and leave a cold-water wake. This storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere also feasted off warm "air" in the gas giant's atmosphere. The storm, first detected on Dec. 5, 2010, and tracked by Cassini's radio and plasma wave subsystem and imaging cameras, erupted around 33 degrees north latitude. Shortly after the bright, turbulent head of the storm emerged and started moving west, it spawned a clockwise-spinning vortex that drifted much more slowly. Within months, the storm wrapped around the planet at that latitude, stretching about 190,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) in circumference, thundering and throwing lightning along the way.

Terrestrial storms have never run into their own wakes – they encounter topographic features like mountains first and expend themselves. But Saturn has no land to stop its hurricanes. The bright, turbulent storm head was able to chomp all the way around the planet. It was only when the head of the storm ran into the vortex in June 2011 that the massive, convective storm faded away. Why the encounter would shut down the storm is still a mystery.

By Aug. 28, after 267 days, the Saturn storm stopped thundering for good. While Cassini's infrared detectors continue to track some lingering effects in higher layers of Saturn's atmosphere, the troposphere -- which is the weather-producing layer, lower in the atmosphere – has been quiet at that latitude.

"This thunder-and-lightning storm on Saturn was a beast," said Kunio Sayanagi, the paper's lead author and a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Virginia. "The storm maintained its intensity for an unusually long time. The storm head itself thrashed for 201 days, and its updraft erupted with an intensity that would have sucked out the entire volume of Earth's atmosphere in 150 days. And it also created the largest vortex ever observed in the troposphere of Saturn, expanding up to 7,500 miles [12,000 kilometers] across."

The vortex grew to be as large as the giant storm known as Oval BA on Jupiter. But Oval BA and Jupiter's more famous storm – the Great Red Spot – are not thunder-and-lightning storms. Jupiter's storms also have a quiet center, unlike the violence at the center of Saturn's storms.

"Cassini's stay in the Saturn system has enabled us to marvel at the power of this storm," said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We had front-row seats to a wonderful adventure movie and got to watch the whole plot from start to finish. These kinds of data help scientists compare weather patterns around our solar system and learn what sustains and extinguishes them."

This storm was the longest running of the massive storms that appear to break out in Saturn's northern hemisphere once every Saturn year (30 Earth years). The longest storm of any size ever detected on Saturn actually unfolded over 334 days in 2009 in an area known as "Storm Alley" in the southern hemisphere, but it was about 100 times smaller in area than the latest northern storm.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the U.S., England, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Herschel Finds Star Past Its Prime Possibly Making Planets

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

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
NASA Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

News release: 2013-038 Jan. 30, 2013

Herschel Finds Star Past Its Prime Possibly Making Planets

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-038&cid=release_2013-038

PASADENA, Calif. -- A star thought to have passed the age at which it can form planets may, in fact, be creating new worlds. The disk of material surrounding the surprising star called TW Hydrae may be massive enough to make even more planets than we have in our own solar system.

The findings were made using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope, a mission in which NASA is a participant.

At roughly 10 million years old and 176 light years away, TW Hydrae is relatively close to Earth by astronomical standards. Its planet-forming disk has been well studied. TW Hydrae is relatively young but, in theory, it is past the age at which giant plants already may have formed.

"We didn't expect to see so much gas around this star," said Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bergin led the new study appearing in the journal Nature. "Typically stars of this age have cleared out their surrounding material, but this star still has enough mass to make the equivalent of 50 Jupiters," Bergin said.

In addition to revealing the peculiar state of the star, the findings also demonstrate a new, more precise method for weighing planet-forming disks. Previous techniques for assessing the mass were indirect and uncertain. The new method can directly probe the gas that typically goes into making planets.

Planets are born out of material swirling around young stars, and the mass of this material is a key factor controlling their formation. Astronomers did not know before the new study whether the disk around TW Hydrae contained enough material to form new planets similar to our own.

"Before, we had to use a proxy to guess the gas quantity in the planet-forming disks," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is another example of Herschel's versatility and sensitivity yielding important new results about star and planet formation."

Using Herschel, scientists were able to take a fresh look at the disk with the space telescope to analyze light coming from TW Hydrae and pick out the spectral signature of a gas called hydrogen deuteride. Simple hydrogen molecules are the main gas component of planets, but they emit light at wavelengths too short to be detected by Herschel. Gas molecules containing deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen, emit light at longer, far-infrared wavelengths that Herschel is equipped to see. This enabled astronomers to measure the levels of hydrogen deuteride and obtain the weight of the disk with the highest precision yet.

"Knowing the mass of a planet-forming disk is crucial to understanding how and when planets take shape around other stars," said Glenn Wahlgren, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Whether TW Hydrae's large disk will lead to an exotic planetary system with larger and more numerous planets than ours remains to be seen, but the new information helps define the range of possible planet scenarios.

"The new results are another important step in understanding the diversity of planetary systems in our universe," said Bergin. "We are now observing systems with massive Jupiters, super-Earths, and many Neptune-like worlds. By weighing systems at their birth, we gain insight into how our own solar system formed with just one of many possible planetary configurations."

Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL, which contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA's Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

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

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

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
NASA Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

2013-038

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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-1100
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

Josh Byerly 281-483-5111
NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston
Josh.byerly@nasa.gov

News release: 2013-037 Jan. 29, 2013

NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-037&cid=release_2013-037

PASADENA, Calif. – In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA's QuikScat
satellite, the agency will launch the ISS-RapidScat instrument to the International Space Station in
2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction.

The ISS-RapidScat instrument will help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring,
and understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions influence Earth's climate.

"The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great
example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth," said
Mike Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager.

ISS-RapidScat will help fill the data gap created when QuikScat, which was designed to last two
years but operated for 10, stopped collecting ocean wind data in late 2009. A scatterometer is a
microwave radar sensor used to measure the reflection or scattering effect produced while scanning
the surface of Earth from an aircraft or a satellite.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have studied next-generation
replacements for QuikScat, but a successor will not be available soon. To meet this challenge cost-
effectively, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the agency's station program
proposed adapting leftover QuikScat hardware in combination with new hardware for use on the
space station.

"ISS-RapidScat represents a low-cost approach to acquiring valuable wind vector data for improving
global monitoring of hurricanes and other high-intensity storms," said Howard Eisen, ISS-RapidScat
project manager at JPL. "By leveraging the capabilities of the International Space Station and
recycling leftover hardware, we will acquire good science data at a fraction of the investment needed
to launch a new satellite."

ISS-RapidScat will have measurement accuracy similar to QuikScat's and will survey all regions of
Earth accessible from the space station's orbit. The instrument will be launched to the space station
aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. It will be installed on the end of the station's Columbus
laboratory as an autonomous payload requiring no interaction by station crew members. It is expected
to operate aboard the station for two years.

ISS-RapidScat will take advantage of the space station's unique characteristics to advance
understanding of Earth's winds. Current scatterometer orbits pass the same point on Earth at
approximately the same time every day. Since the space station's orbit intersects the orbits of each of
these satellites about once every hour, ISS-RapidScat can serve as a calibration standard and help
scientists stitch together the data from multiple sources into a long-term record.

ISS-RapidScat also will collect measurements of Earth's global wind field at all times of day for all
locations. Variations in winds caused by the sun can play a significant role in the formation of
tropical clouds and tropical systems that play a dominant role in Earth's water and energy cycles. ISS-
RapidScat observations will help scientists understand these phenomena better and improve weather
and climate models.

The ISS-RapidScat project is a joint partnership of JPL and NASA's International Space Station
Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, with support from the Earth Science
Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more on NASA's scatterometry missions, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm . For more
information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station .

You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL
for NASA.

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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thawing 'Dry Ice' Drives Groovy Action on Mars

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

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

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

News release: 2013-034 Jan. 24, 2013

Thawing 'Dry Ice' Drives Groovy Action on Mars

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-034&cid=release_2013-034

PASADENA, Calif. -- Researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter see seasonal changes on far-northern Martian sand dunes caused by warming of a winter blanket of frozen carbon dioxide.

Earth has no naturally frozen carbon dioxide, though pieces of manufactured carbon-dioxide ice, called "dry ice," sublime directly from solid to gas on Earth, just as the vast blankets of dry ice do on Mars. A driving factor in the springtime changes where seasonal coverings of dry ice form on Mars is that thawing occurs at the underside of the ice sheet, where it is in contact with dark ground being warmed by early-spring sunshine through translucent ice. The trapped gas builds up pressure and breaks out in various ways.

Transient grooves form on dunes when gas trapped under the ice blanket finds an escape point and whooshes out, carrying out sand with it. The expelled sand forms dark fans or streaks on top of the ice layer at first, but this evidence disappears with the seasonal ice, and summer winds erase most of the grooves in the dunes before the next winter. The grooves are smaller features than the gullies that earlier research linked to carbon-dioxide sublimation on steeper dune slopes.

Similar activity has been documented and explained previously where seasonal sheets of frozen carbon dioxide form and thaw near Mars' south pole. Details of the different northern seasonal changes are newly reported in a set of three papers for the journal Icarus. A video showing some of the changes is online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.php?id=1184 .

The findings reinforce growing appreciation that Mars today, however different from its former self, is still a dynamic world, and however similar to Earth in some respects, displays some quite unearthly processes.

"It's an amazingly dynamic process," said Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson. She is lead author of the first of the three new reports. "We had this old paradigm that all the action on Mars was billions of years ago. Thanks to the ability to monitor changes with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of the new paradigms is that Mars has many active processes today."

With three Martian years (six Earth years) of data in hand from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the researchers report on the sequence and variety of seasonal changes. The spring changes include outbursts of gas carrying sand, polygonal cracking of the winter ice blanketing the dunes, sandfalls down the faces of the dunes, and dark fans of sand propelled out onto the ice.

"It is a challenge to catch when and how those changes happen, they are so fast," said Ganna Portyankina of the University of Bern in Switzerland, lead author of the second report. "That's why only now we start to see the bigger picture that both hemispheres actually tell us similar stories."

The process of outrushing gas that carves grooves into the northern dunes resembles the process creating spider-shaped features in far southern Mars, as seen in an image at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12249, but the spiders have not been seen in the north. The seasonal dry-ice sheets overlie different types of terrain in the two hemispheres. In the south, diverse terrains include the flat, erodible ground where the spiders form, but in the north, a broad band of sand dunes encircles the permanent north polar ice cap.

Another difference is in brightening on parts of the ice-covered dunes. This brightening in the north results from the presence of water-ice frost, while in the south, similar brightening is caused by fresh carbon dioxide. The third paper of the Icarus set, by Antoine Pommerol of the University of Bern and co-authors, reports distribution of the water frost using the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The light water frost is blown around by spring winds.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., provided and operates CRISM. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter. For more about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

A slide show of Martian icy scenes is online at: http://1.usa.gov/ZoAO8I .

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NASA Officially Joins ESA's 'Dark Universe' Mission

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

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
NASA Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

News release: 2013-033 Jan. 24, 2013

NASA Officially Joins ESA's 'Dark Universe' Mission

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-033&cid=release_2013-033

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has joined the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Euclid will launch in 2020 and spend six years mapping the locations and measuring the shapes of as many as 2 billion galaxies spread over more than one-third of the sky. It will study the evolution of our universe, and the dark matter and dark energy that influence its evolution in ways that still are poorly understood.

The telescope will launch to an orbit around the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. The Lagrange point is a location where the gravitational pull of two large masses, the sun and Earth in this case, precisely equals the force required for a small object, such as the Euclid spacecraft, to maintain a relatively stationary position behind Earth as seen from the sun.

"NASA is very proud to contribute to ESA's mission to understand one of the greatest science mysteries of our time," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington.

NASA and ESA recently signed an agreement outlining NASA's role in the project. NASA will contribute 16 state-of-the-art infrared detectors and four spare detectors for one of two science instruments planned for Euclid.

"ESA's Euclid mission is designed to probe one of the most fundamental questions in modern cosmology, and we welcome NASA's contribution to this important endeavor, the most recent in a long history of cooperation in space science between our two agencies," said Alvaro Giménez, ESA's Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.

In addition, NASA has nominated three U.S. science teams totaling 40 new members for the Euclid Consortium. This is in addition to 14 U.S. scientists already supporting the mission. The Euclid Consortium is an international body of 1,000 members who will oversee development of the instruments, manage science operations and analyze data.

Euclid will map the dark matter in the universe. Matter as we know it -- the atoms that make up the human body, for example -- is a fraction of the total matter in the universe. The rest, about 85 percent, is dark matter consisting of particles of an unknown type. Dark matter first was postulated in 1932, but still has not been detected directly. It is called dark matter because it does not interact with light. Dark matter interacts with ordinary matter through gravity and binds galaxies together like an invisible glue.

While dark matter pulls matter together, dark energy pushes the universe apart at ever-increasing speeds. In terms of the total mass-energy content of the universe, dark energy dominates. Even less is known about dark energy than dark matter.

Euclid will use two techniques to study the dark universe, both involving precise measurements of galaxies billions of light-years away. The observations will yield the best measurements yet of how the acceleration of the universe has changed over time, providing new clues about the evolution and fate of the cosmos.

Euclid is an ESA mission with science instruments provided by a consortia of European institutes and with important participation from NASA. NASA's Euclid Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. JPL will contribute the infrared flight detectors for the Euclid science instrument. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will test the infrared flight detectors prior to delivery. Three U.S. science teams will contribute to science planning and data analysis. JPL is managed by for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about Euclid, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/euclid, http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=102 and http://www.euclid-ec.org/ .

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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Curiosity Rover on Display for Premiere of Mars Film

This is a feature of the NASA/JPL Education Office

Feature Jan. 22, 2013

Curiosity Rover on Display for Premiere of Mars Film

Hear the story of the first quests to explore the Red Planet and get up close and personal with two pieces of Mars exploration history on Jan. 23 as JPL premieres its latest documentary film, "The Changing Face of Mars," at Caltech's Beckman Auditorium.

Space enthusiasts will have a chance to see a full-scale replica of the Curiosity Mars rover as well as the "first image of Mars" assembled from Mariner 4 data, a historic image with unusual origins that's featured in the 90-minute documentary.

"With these two exhibits, the past will encounter the present and will serve as enriching reminders to demonstrate just how far we have come in the robotic exploration of the solar system," notes the film's producer/director/writer, Blaine Baggett, director of the office of communication and education at JPL.

From just a flickering red speck in the night sky to a world rife with scientific treasure, Mars has so spellbound our minds and imaginations that the quest to unmask it is nearly as storied as the planet itself. Since the Mariner 4 spacecraft first visited the Red Planet in 1965, our understanding of Mars has drastically changed.

"The Changing Face of Mars" is told through a mix of archival footage and interviews with the scientists and engineers who pioneered Mars exploration. One of those pioneers, John Casani, will provide introductory remarks before the free premiere on Wednesday.

We hope you and your students will join us in celebrating the achievements of those who have and will "dare mighty things" in the ongoing quest to explore one of our most fascinating planetary neighbors.

To learn more about the film and attend the Jan. 23 premiere, which is open to the public, visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/faceofmars/.

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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Martian Crater May Once Have Held Groundwater-Fed Lake

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JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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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

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

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

News release: 2013-028 Jan. 20, 2013

Martian Crater May Once Have Held Groundwater-Fed Lake

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-028&cid=release_2013-028

PASADENA, Calif. -- A NASA spacecraft is providing new evidence of a wet underground
environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet's early
evolution.

The new information comes from researchers analyzing spectrometer data from NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, which looked down on the floor of McLaughlin Crater. The Martian
crater is 57 miles (92 kilometers) in diameter and 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) deep. McLaughlin's
depth apparently once allowed underground water, which otherwise would have stayed hidden,
to flow into the crater's interior.

Layered, flat rocks at the bottom of the crater contain carbonate and clay minerals that form in
the presence of water. McLaughlin lacks large inflow channels, and small channels originating
within the crater wall end near a level that could have marked the surface of a lake.

Together, these new observations suggest the formation of the carbonates and clay in a
groundwater-fed lake within the closed basin of the crater. Some researchers propose the crater
interior catching the water and the underground zone contributing the water could have been wet
environments and potential habitats. The findings are published in Sunday's online edition of
Nature Geoscience.

"Taken together, the observations in McLaughlin Crater provide the best evidence for carbonate
forming within a lake environment instead of being washed into a crater from outside," said
Joseph Michalski, lead author of the paper, which has five co-authors. Michalski also is affiliated
with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and London's Natural History Museum.

Michalski and his co-authors used the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars
(CRISM) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to check for minerals such as carbonates,
which are best preserved under non-acidic conditions.

"The MRO team has made a concerted effort to get highly processed data products out to
members of the science community like Dr. Michalski for analysis," said CRISM Principal
Investigator Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in
Laurel, Md. "New results like this show why that effort is so important."

Launched in 2005, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its six instruments have provided more
high-resolution data about the Red Planet than all other Mars orbiters combined. Data are made
available for scientists worldwide to research, analyze and report their findings.

"A number of studies using CRISM data have shown rocks exhumed from the subsurface by
meteor impact were altered early in Martian history, most likely by hydrothermal fluids,"
Michalski said. "These fluids trapped in the subsurface could have periodically breached the
surface in deep basins such as McLaughlin Crater, possibly carrying clues to subsurface
habitability."

McLaughlin Crater sits at the low end of a regional slope several hundreds of miles, or
kilometers, long on the western side of the Arabia Terra region of Mars. As on Earth,
groundwater-fed lakes are expected to occur at low regional elevations. Therefore, this site
would be a good candidate for such a process.

"This new report and others are continuing to reveal a more complex Mars than previously
appreciated, with at least some areas more likely to reveal signs of ancient life than others," said
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Rich Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., provided and
operates CRISM. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter.

To see an image of the carbonate-bearing layers in McLaughlin Crater, visit:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16710 .

For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

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