NASA Holds Google+ Hangout on Cassini's Findings at Saturn

LATEST NEWS NASA Holds Google+ Hangout on Cassini's Findings at Saturn NASA will host a Google+ Hangout at 12:30 p.m. PST (3:30 p.m. EST) on Wednesday, Dec. 4, to discuss images of Saturn taken by the agency's Cassini spacecraft. The Hangout also will look ahead to the next few years of the Cassini mission. › Read more

 

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NASA Map Aides Typhoon Disaster Response | Mars Sites Named For Former JPL Director

LATEST NEWS NASA Damage Map Helps in Typhoon Disaster Response A new, space-based map generated by a NASA/JPL-Italian Space Agency collaboration is helping in Typhoon Haiyan disaster response efforts in the Philippines. Read more Mars Rover Teams Dub Sites in Memory of Bruce Murray Features on Mars are now called "Murray Ridge" and "Murray Buttes," in honor of influential planetary scientist Bruce Murray (1931-2013). Read more

 

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NASA Cassini Spacecraft Provides New View of Saturn and Earth

LATEST NEWS NASA Cassini Spacecraft Provides New View of Saturn and Earth NASA has released a natural-color image of Saturn from space, the first in which Saturn, its moons and rings, and Earth, Venus and Mars, all are visible. › Read more

 

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Atmospheric-River Storms | MRO Milestone Passed

LATEST NEWS Prolific NASA Mars Orbiter Passes Big Data Milestone NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has overhauled understanding of the Red Planet since 2006, has now returned more than 200 trillion bits of data. Read more Study Finds Climate Link to Atmospheric-River Storms A NASA-led study of "atmospheric river" storms and global climate patterns may help predict winter snowfall and spring flooding in California's Sierra Nevadas. Read more

 

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NASA's GRAIL Mission Puts a New Face on the Moon

LATEST NEWS NASA's GRAIL Mission Puts a New Face on the Moon Scientists using data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission are gaining new insight into how the face of the moon received its rugged good looks.   Read more

 

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Rare New Microbe Found in Two Distant Clean Rooms

LATEST NEWS Rare New Microbe Found in Two Distant Clean Rooms A newly discovered microbe that survives on very little to eat has been found in only two places on Earth.   Read more Black Holes Don't Make a Big Splash When black holes merge, they send gravitational waves rippling through space and time. By not detecting these waves, astronomers are learning about black hole evolution.   Read more It's Complicated: Dawn Spurs Rewrite of Vesta's Story A new analysis of data from NASA's Dawn mission suggests the story of Vesta's formation isn't as simple as scientists thought.   Read more

 

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NASA Hosts Earth Science Social Media Event

News release: 2013-315b                                                             Oct. 29, 2013 NASA Hosts Earth Science Social Media Event The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-315b&cid=release_2013-315b One-hundred people from 22 U.S. states and some foreign countries will attend a two-day NASA Social on Nov. 4 and 5 at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The attendees, who follow NASA and JPL on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks, will tour JPL, participate in interactive events and hear from scientists and engineers about current and upcoming space- and Earth-observing missions. Attendees will share their experiences with their followers through the various social media platforms. The Nov. 4 events will highlight NASA's role in studying Earth and its climate and will preview three Earth-observing missions JPL is preparing for launch in 2014: the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft, which will measure soil moisture from space; ISS-RapidScat, which will measure ocean winds from the International Space Station; and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), which will study atmospheric carbon dioxide from space. These presentations will air on NASA Television on Nov. 4 starting at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 . To join and track the conversation online during the NASA Social, follow the hashtag #NASASocial . NASA Social attendees were selected from more than 475 people who registered online. Participants represent Canada, Croatia, Indonesia, Norway, Peru, the United States and the United Kingdom. Attendees from the U.S. come from 22 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. More information about connecting and collaborating with NASA is at: http://www.nasa.gov/connect . More information about SMAP is online at: http://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/ . More information about ISS-RapidScat is at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/ISSRapidScat.html and http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/RapidScat/ . More information about OCO-2 is at: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/ . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. Courtney O'Connor 818-354-2274 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. oconnor@jpl.nasa.gov John Yembrick / Jason Townsend 202-358-1584 / 202-358-0359 NASA Headquarters, Washington john.yembrick@nasa.gov / jason.c.townsend@nasa.gov - end -

 

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Upcoming Workshops, Giveaway Days at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center

This is a feature of the NASA/JPL Education Office                                          Oct. 29, 2013 Educator Workshop: Lunar and Meteorite Sample Certification Program Date: Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Target Audience: This workshop is for credentialed teachers, teaching grades K-12 in a classroom setting Location: NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif. Overview: NASA makes actual lunar samples from the historic Apollo missions available to lend to teachers. You must attend this certification workshop to bring the excitement of real lunar rocks and regolith samples to your students. Please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot. For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115 *Note: The NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center will be hosting a giveaway day featuring numerous items from its Pomona, Calif., location immediately following this workshop. See below for more information. Educator Workshop: Marsbound! Mission to the Red Planet Date: Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013, 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Target audience: Educators for grades 4 and above Location: NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif. Overview: Bring Marsbound! Mission to the Red Planet, an exciting hands-on lesson that addresses Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards, to your classroom! Build a mission to Mars using a mat and cards game, design and redesign, facing the same problems that real engineers and scientists face. Compare Earth and Mars geology and explore what it will take to create a Mars colony, socially, historically, physically and vocationally! This workshop is limited to 30 participants. Please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot. For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115 *Note: The NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center will be hosting a giveaway day featuring numerous items from its Pomona, Calif., location immediately following this workshop. See below for more information. Giveaway Days: After 15 years in its Pomona, Calif., location, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Educator Resource Center will be moving. (A new arrangement for the center has not been determined. Continue to check the ERC page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115 for future updates.) To facilitate our move, we need your help giving some of our excess material a new home. Up for grabs are items such as historical reference books, posters, historical JPL annual reports, bookmarks, postcards, and other JPL and educational materials. In the coming months, we will have two free yard-sale-type events during which you can visit the ERC at the Indian Hill Mall in Pomona and take whatever you can use: Saturday, Nov. 9 and Saturday, Dec. 7. The doors will open for each event at 12:30 p.m. and close at 2:30 p.m., no need to RSVP. We recommend arriving with boxes or bags to carry items home. No early birds please. - end -

 

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NASA's Great Observatories Begin Deepest-Ever Probe of the Universe

News Release: 2013-306                                                             Oct. 24, 2013 NASA's Great Observatories Begin Deepest-Ever Probe of the Universe The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-306 PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before. With a boost from natural "zoom lenses" found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as much as 100 times fainter than what these three great observatories typically can see. In an ambitious collaborative program called The Frontier Fields, astronomers will make observations during the next three years peering at six massive clusters of galaxies, exploiting a natural phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, to learn not only what is inside the clusters but also what is beyond them. The clusters are among the most massive assemblages of matter known, and their gravitational fields can be used to brighten and magnify more distant galaxies so they can be observed. "The Frontier Fields program is exactly what NASA's Great Observatories were designed to do; working together to unravel the mysteries of the universe" said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Each observatory collects images using different wavelengths of light with the result that we get a much deeper understanding of the underlying physics of these celestial objects." The first object they will view is Abell 2744, commonly known as Pandora's Cluster. The giant galaxy cluster appears to be the result of a simultaneous pile-up of at least four separate, smaller galaxy clusters that took place over a span of 350 million years. Astronomers anticipate these observations will reveal populations of galaxies that existed when the universe was only a few hundred million years old, but have not been seen before. "The idea is to use nature's natural telescopes in combination with the great observatories to look much deeper than before and find the most distant and faint galaxies we can possibly see," said Jennifer Lotz, a principal investigator with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. Data from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes will be combined to measure the galaxies' distances and masses more accurately than either observatory could measure alone, demonstrating their synergy for such studies. "We want to understand when and how the first stars and galaxies formed in the universe, and each great observatory gives us a different piece of the puzzle," said Peter Capak, the Spitzer principal investigator for the Frontier Fields program at NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "Hubble tells you which galaxies to look at and how many stars are being born in those systems. Spitzer tells you how old the galaxy is and how many stars have formed." The Chandra X-ray Observatory also will peer deep into the star fields. It will image the clusters at X-ray wavelengths to help determine their mass and measure their gravitational lensing power, and identify background galaxies hosting supermassive black holes. High-resolution Hubble data from Frontier Fields will be used to trace the distribution of dark matter within the six massive foreground clusters. Accounting for the bulk of the universe's mass, dark matter is the underlying invisible scaffolding attached to galaxies. Hubble and Spitzer have studied other deep fields with great success. The Frontier Fields researchers anticipate a challenge because the distortion and magnification caused by the gravitational lensing phenomenon will make it difficult for them to understand the true properties of the background galaxies. For images and more information about The Frontier Fields, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news/2013/44 . NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer . Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov Ray Villard 410-338-4514 Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. villard@stsci.edu J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241 Headquarters, Washington j.d.harrington@nasa.gov - end -

 

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NASA's Deep Space Comet Hunter Mission Comes to an End

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

D.C. 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

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

News release: 2013-287 Sept. 20, 2013

NASA's Deep Space Comet Hunter Mission Comes to an End

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-287&cid=release_2013-287

PASADENA, Calif. - After almost 9 years in space that included an unprecedented July 4th impact
and subsequent flyby of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of approximately 500,000
images of celestial objects, NASA's Deep Impact mission has ended.

The project team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has reluctantly
pronounced the mission at an end after being unable to communicate with the spacecraft for over a
month. The last communication with the probe was Aug. 8. Deep Impact was history's most traveled
comet research mission, going about 4.7 billion miles (7.58 billion kilometers).

"Deep Impact has been a fantastic, long-lasting spacecraft that has produced far more data than we
had planned," said Mike A'Hearn, the Deep Impact principal investigator at the University of
Maryland in College Park. "It has revolutionized our understanding of comets and their activity."

Deep Impact successfully completed its original bold mission of six months in 2005 to investigate
both the surface and interior composition of a comet, and a subsequent extended mission of another
comet flyby and observations of planets around other stars that lasted from July 2007 to December
2010. Since then, the spacecraft has been continually used as a space-borne planetary observatory to
capture images and other scientific data on several targets of opportunity with its telescopes and
instrumentation.

Launched in January 2005, the spacecraft first traveled about 268 million miles (431 million
kilometers) to the vicinity of comet Tempel 1. On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft deployed an impactor
into the path of comet to essentially be run over by its nucleus on July 4. This caused material from
below the comet's surface to be blasted out into space where it could be examined by the telescopes
and instrumentation of the flyby spacecraft. Sixteen days after that comet encounter, the Deep Impact
team placed the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly back past Earth in late December 2007 to put it on
course to encounter another comet, Hartley 2 in November 2010.

"Six months after launch, this spacecraft had already completed its planned mission to study comet
Tempel 1," said Tim Larson, project manager of Deep Impact at JPL. "But the science team kept
finding interesting things to do, and through the ingenuity of our mission team and navigators and
support of NASA's Discovery Program, this spacecraft kept it up for more than eight years, producing
amazing results all along the way."

The spacecraft's extended mission culminated in the successful flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4,
2010. Along the way, it also observed six different stars to confirm the motion of planets orbiting
them, and took images and data of Earth, the moon and Mars. These data helped to confirm the
existence of water on the moon, and attempted to confirm the methane signature in the atmosphere of
Mars. One sequence of images is a breathtaking view of the moon transiting across the face of Earth.

In January 2012, Deep Impact performed imaging and accessed the composition of distant comet
C/2009 P1 (Garradd). It took images of comet ISON this year and collected early images of ISON in
June.

After losing contact with the spacecraft last month, mission controllers spent several weeks trying to
uplink commands to reactivate its onboard systems. Although the exact cause of the loss is not
known, analysis has uncovered a potential problem with computer time tagging that could have led to
loss of control for Deep Impact's orientation. That would then affect the positioning of its radio
antennas, making communication difficult, as well as its solar arrays, which would in turn prevent the
spacecraft from getting power and allow cold temperatures to ruin onboard equipment, essentially
freezing its battery and propulsion systems.

"Despite this unexpected final curtain call, Deep Impact already achieved much more than ever was
envisioned," said Lindley Johnson, the Discovery Program Executive at NASA Headquarters, and the
Program Executive for the mission since a year before it launched. "Deep Impact has completely
overturned what we thought we knew about comets and also provided a treasure trove of additional
planetary science that will be the source data of research for years to come."

The mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Ala. JPL manages the Deep Impact mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., built the spacecraft. The
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

To find out more about Deep Impact's scientific results, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/19ki9LG .
For more information about Deep Impact, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact .

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