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MESSENGER Begins Historic Orbit Around Mercury
NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around Mercury at approximately 9 p.m. EDT Thursday. This marks the first time a spacecraft has accomplished this engineering and scientific milestone at our solar system's innermost planet. For the next several weeks, APL engineers will be focused on ensuring the spacecraft’s systems are all working well in Mercury’s harsh thermal environment. Starting on March 23, the instruments will be turned on and checked out, and on April 4 the mission's primary science phase will begin. ATK and Astrium Unveil the Liberty™ Launch Vehicle Initiative for NASA's CCDev-2 Competition
Based on the Most Reliable Propulsion Systems in the World, the Liberty™ can Achieve a First Flight by 2013 and Close the U.S. Human Space Flight Gap. WASHINGTON, Feb. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ATK (NYSE: ATK) and Astrium (an EADS Company) are working together in response to NASA's Commercial Crew Development-2 (CCDev-2) procurement. The team is offering NASA launch services with the Liberty™ rocket. This new launch vehicle combines two of the world's most reliable propulsion systems, with a collective heritage of nearly 150 successful flights. ATK would supply the human-rated first stage, which it developed under NASA's Space Exploration Program. The five-segment solid rocket first stage is derived from the Space Shuttle's four-segment solid rocket boosters (SRBs) which are built by ATK and have flown 107 successful missions since 1988 (encompassing 214 SRBs). Astrium, the developer and manufacturer of the Ariane 5 launcher, working with Snecma (Safran Group), Europe's leading propulsion company, is providing Liberty's second stage based on the liquid-fueled cryogenic core of the Ariane 5 vehicle powered by the Vulcain2 engine. The Ariane 5 Launcher, operated by Arianespace, has flown more than 40 consecutive successful missions over nearly eight years and has launched more commercial satellites than any other launch vehicle in the world during that time. The Ariane 5 enjoys the lowest launch insurance rates in the industry due to an unrivaled safety record in the commercial launch services market. "This team represents the true sense of international partnership in that we looked across borders to find the best for our customers," said Blake Larson, President of ATK Aerospace Systems Group. "Together we combine unique flight-proven systems and commercial experience that allows us to offer the market's most capable launch vehicle along with flexibility to meet a wide variety of emerging needs. Liberty provides greater performance at less cost than any other comparable launch vehicle." Liberty would be a two stage launcher able to deliver 44,500 pounds to the International Space Station orbit, which would give it a launch capability to carry any crew vehicle in development. Both stages were designed for human-rating since inception and would enable unmatched crew safety. Since Liberty uses qualified, proven, and reliable systems, the team has planned an initial flight by the end of 2013, a second test flight in 2014, and operational capability in 2015. "The Liberty initiative provides tremendous value because it builds on European Ariane 5 launcher heritage, while allowing NASA to leverage the mature first stage," said Charlie Precourt, Vice President and General Manager of ATK Space Launch Systems. "We will provide unmatched payload performance at a fraction of the cost, and we will launch it from the Kennedy Space Center using facilities that have already been built. This approach allows NASA to utilize the investments that have already been made in our nation's ground infrastructure and propulsion systems for the Space Exploration Program." The advantages of the Liberty launch system are extensive. It is built on a solid foundation of human-rated launch technology, and leverages billions of dollars of investments by NASA and NATO-allied European Governments in the frame of the European Space Agency. This international effort—which embodies the spirit of global cooperation articulated in the recent National Space Policy—will afford NASA a readily available, cost-effective solution for human spaceflight. Finally, NASA is already extremely familiar with the Ariane and ATK launch systems, both of which have played historic roles in directly supporting NASA's mission. The five-segment first stage design is based on more than 30 years of safety-driven improvements on the space shuttle program. The result is a higher performing, more reliable solid rocket motor, which equates to increased safety for crew and mission success for cargo. Besides adding a fifth segment, ATK also enhanced the propellant grain, provided a larger nozzle opening, and upgraded the liner and insulation — all designed to meet performance requirements and increase reliability while significantly lowering manufacturing costs. The five-segment first stage was successfully ground tested twice (September 2009 and August 2010), and the successful Ares I-X flight test in October 2009 demonstrated vehicle proof of concept, and vital flight performance of a launch vehicle configuration very comparable to Liberty. It also demonstrated effective vehicle integration, ground processing and launch operations. Other Liberty team members include: United Space Alliance (USA) of Houston, Texas and Kennedy Space Center, Fla. for launch vehicle integration and ground operations support, and L-3 Communications of Cincinnati, Ohio for first stage avionics. About ATK – ATK is an aerospace, defense, and commercial products company with operations in 24 states, Puerto Rico, and internationally, and revenues of approximately $4.8 billion. News and information can be found on the Internet at www.atk.com. About Astrium - Astrium, a wholly owned subsidiary of EADS, is dedicated to providing civil and defence space systems and services. In 2009, Astrium had a turnover of euro 4.8 billion and more than 15,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Its three main areas of activity are Astrium Space Transportation for launchers and orbital infrastructure, Astrium Satellites for spacecraft and ground segment, and Astrium Services for comprehensive end-to-end value-added solutions covering secure and commercial satcoms and networks, high security satellite communications equipment, bespoke geo-information and navigation services worldwide. EADS is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services. In 2009, the Group – comprising Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter – generated revenues of euro 42.8 billion and employed a workforce of more than 119,000. EADS operates in the United States through EADS North America. News and information can be found on the Internet at www.astrium.eads.net About Snecma (Safran Group): Snecma (Safran Group) is one of the world's leading manufacturers of aircraft and space engines, with a wide range of propulsion systems on offer. The company designs and builds commercial aircraft engines – including the CFM56 world's leader – and military aircraft engines, together with a complete range of engine maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) services. Snecma develops and produces propulsion systems and equipment for launch vehicles and satellites. In this field, Snecma brings together 40 partners across twelve of the European Space Agency's member states, to produce Ariane's Vulcain, Vulcain2 and HM7B engines. www.snecma.com About Ariane 5: The Ariane 5 Launcher in the frame of ESA (European Space Agency) programs, is developed and manufactured by Astrium and operated by Arianespace. Arianespace is the world's leading launch Service & Solutions company, providing innovation to its customers since 1980. Backed by 21 shareholders and the European Space Agency, Arianespace offers an unrivalled family of launchers, comprising Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega, and an international workforce renowned for a culture of commitment and excellence. As of January 31, 2011, Arianespace has launched with Ariane launchers a total of 289 payloads, including more than half of all the commercial satellites now in service worldwide. It has a backlog of 21 Ariane 5 and 18 Soyuz launches, equal to more than three years of business. City Lights Redux
A night view of the upper two-thirds of the Florida peninsula was recorded by the Expedition 26 crew aboard the International Space Station on Dec. 28, 2010. Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center are very well lighted on the Atlantic Ocean side of the peninsula to the right in this image. The Tampa-St. Petersburg area is seen on the Gulf of Mexico or left side of the frame. At top or in the north areas of the picture are portions of the state’s panhandle as well as cities and communities in southern Georgia. NASA'S NEOWISE COMPLETES SCAN FOR ASTEROIDS AND COMETS WASHINGTON -- NASA's NEOWISE mission has completed its survey of small NASA's Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe
WASHINGTON (MMD Newswire) January 26, 2011 -- Astronomers have pushed NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what is likely to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe. The object's light traveled 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble, roughly 150 million years longer than the previous record holder. The age of the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years. The tiny, dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the big bang. More than 100 such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way. The new research offers surprising evidence that the rate of star birth in the early universe grew dramatically, increasing by about a factor of 10 from 480 million years to 650 million years after the big bang. "NASA continues to reach for new heights, and this latest Hubble discovery will deepen our understanding of the universe and benefit generations to come," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was the pilot of the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit. "We could only dream when we launched Hubble more than 20 years ago that it would have the ability to make these types of groundbreaking discoveries and rewrite textbooks." Astronomers don't know exactly when the first stars appeared in the universe, but every step farther from Earth takes them deeper into the early formative years when stars and galaxies began to emerge in the aftermath of the big bang. "These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the earlier primeval objects that have yet to be found," said Rychard Bouwens of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Bouwens and Illingworth report the discovery in the Jan. 27 issue of the British science journal Nature. This observation was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 starting just a few months after it was installed in the observatory in May 2009, during the last NASA space shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. After more than a year of detailed observations and analysis, the object was positively identified in the camera's Hubble Ultra Deep Field-Infrared data taken in the late summers of 2009 and 2010. The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble exposures. It is too young and too small to have the familiar spiral shape that is characteristic of galaxies in the local universe. Although its individual stars can't be resolved by Hubble, the evidence suggests this is a compact galaxy of hot stars formed more than 100-to-200 million years earlier from gas trapped in a pocket of dark matter. "We're peering into an era where big changes are afoot," said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz. "The rapid rate at which the star birth is changing tells us if we go a little further back in time we're going to see even more dramatic changes, closer to when the first galaxies were just starting to form." The proto-galaxy is only visible at the farthest infrared wavelengths observable by Hubble. Observations of earlier times, when the first stars and galaxies were forming, will require Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The hypothesized hierarchical growth of galaxies -- from stellar clumps to majestic spirals and ellipticals -- didn't become evident until the Hubble deep field exposures. The first 500 million years of the universe's existence, from a z of 1000 to 10, is the missing chapter in the hierarchical growth of galaxies. It's not clear how the universe assembled structure out of a darkening, cooling fireball of the big bang. As with a developing embryo, astronomers know there must have been an early period of rapid changes that would set the initial conditions to make the universe of galaxies what it is today. "After 20 years of opening our eyes to the universe around us, Hubble continues to awe and surprise astronomers," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "It now offers a tantalizing look at the very edge of the known universe -- a frontier NASA strives to explore." Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington. JAXA, Japan Launches 5 tons of cargo destined for the International Space Station aboard HTV2 "White Swan" 1/22/2011 EST Space Shuttle Program baselines STS-135 On Thursday, the Space Shuttle Program baselined the STS-135 mission for a target launch date of June 28. It is NASA’s intent to fly the mission with orbiter Atlantis carrying the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts to the International Space Station. The mission also will fly a system to investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing spacecraft and return a failed ammonia pump module to help NASA better understand the failure mechanism and improve pump designs for future systems. In late December, the agency’s Space Operations Mission Directorate requested the shuttle and International Space Station programs take the necessary steps to maintain the capability to fly Atlantis on the STS-135 mission. The Authorization Act of 2010 directs NASA to conduct the mission, and baselining the flight enables the program to begin preparations for the mission with a target launch date of June 28. The mission would be the 135th and final space shuttle flight. Prepping for the next shuttle mission, STS-133, continues in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida where technicians are making good progress in their work to modify the stringers on Discovery's external fuel tank. Discovery and its six astronauts are targeted to launch on the STS-133 mission to the International Space Station on Feb. 24. Having been joined by their newest crew member, Steve Bowen, Discovery’s astronauts will review robotics procedures today and review spacewalk timelines at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Bowen, who flew into space on STS-132 in May 2010, will be the first astronaut to fly on consecutive missions. NASA SPACECRAFT PREPARES FOR VALENTINE'S DAY COMET RENDEZVOUS
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial The Stardust-NExT, or New Exploration of Tempel, spacecraft will take The mission will expand the investigation of the comet initiated by "Every day we are getting closer and closer and more and more excited At approximately 209 million miles away from Earth, Stardust-NExT will Initial raw images from the flyby will be sent to Earth for processing As of today, the spacecraft is approximately 15.3 million miles away Another three maneuvers are planned to refine the spacecraft's path to In 2004, the Stardust mission became the first to collect particles Mission controllers placed the still viable Stardust spacecraft on a "You could say our spacecraft is a seasoned veteran of cometary The mission team expects this flyby to write the final chapter of the JPL manages mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in For more information about the Stardust-NExt mission, visit:
NASA'S Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet WASHINGTON (MMD Newswire) January 10, 2011 -- NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system. The discovery of this so-called exoplanet is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010. "All of Kepler's best capabilities have converged to yield the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler's deputy science team lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and primary author of a paper on the discovery accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. "The Kepler team made a commitment in 2010 about finding the telltale signatures of small planets in the data, and it's beginning to pay off." Kepler's ultra-precise photometer measures the tiny decrease in a star's brightness that occurs when a planet crosses in front of it. The size of the planet can be derived from these periodic dips in brightness. The distance between the planet and the star is calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. However, since it orbits once every 0.84 days, Kepler-10b is more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun and not in the habitable zone. Kepler-10 was the first star identified that could potentially harbor a small transiting planet, placing it at the top of the list for ground-based observations with the W.M. Keck Observatory 10-meter telescope in Hawaii. Scientists waiting for a signal to confirm Kepler-10b as a planet were not disappointed. Keck was able to measure tiny changes in the star's spectrum, called Doppler shifts, caused by the telltale tug exerted by the orbiting planet on the star. "The discovery of Kepler 10-b is a significant milestone in the search for planets similar to our own," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Although this planet is not in the habitable zone, the exciting find showcases the kinds of discoveries made possible by the mission and the promise of many more to come," he said. Knowledge of the planet is only as good as the knowledge of the star it orbits. Because Kepler-10 is one of the brighter stars being targeted by Kepler, scientists were able to detect high frequency variations in the star's brightness generated by stellar oscillations, or starquakes. This analysis allowed scientists to pin down Kepler-10b's properties. There is a clear signal in the data arising from light waves that travel within the interior of the star. Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium scientists use the information to better understand the star, just as earthquakes are used to learn about Earth's interior structure. As a result of this analysis, Kepler-10 is one of the most well characterized planet-hosting stars in the universe. That's good news for the team studying Kepler-10b. Accurate stellar properties yield accurate planet properties. In the case of Kepler-10b, the picture that emerges is of a rocky planet with a mass 4.6 times that of Earth and with an average density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter -- similar to that of an iron dumbbell. Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters.
NASA'S Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter Into Space WASHINGTON -- Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before. Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected. "These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Although Fermi's GBM is designed to observe high-energy events in the universe, it's also providing valuable insights into this strange phenomenon. The GBM constantly monitors the entire celestial sky above and the Earth below. The GBM team has identified 130 TGFs since Fermi's launch in 2008. "In orbit for less than three years, the Fermi mission has proven to be an amazing tool to probe the universe. Now we learn that it can discover mysteries much, much closer to home," said Ilana Harrus, Fermi program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The spacecraft was located immediately above a thunderstorm for most of the observed TGFs, but in four cases, storms were far from Fermi. In addition, lightning-generated radio signals detected by a global monitoring network indicated the only lightning at the time was hundreds or more miles away. During one TGF, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2009, Fermi was located over Egypt. But the active storm was in Zambia, some 2,800 miles to the south. The distant storm was below Fermi's horizon, so any gamma rays it produced could not have been detected. "Even though Fermi couldn't see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it," said Joseph Dwyer at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla. "The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth's magnetic field to strike the spacecraft." The beam continued past Fermi, reached a location, known as a mirror point, where its motion was reversed, and then hit the spacecraft a second time just 23 milliseconds later. Each time, positrons in the beam collided with electrons in the spacecraft. The particles annihilated each other, emitting gamma rays detected by Fermi's GBM. Scientists long have suspected TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, they say, the field becomes strong enough that it drives an upward avalanche of electrons. Reaching speeds nearly as fast as light, the high-energy electrons give off gamma rays when they're deflected by air molecules. Normally, these gamma rays are detected as a TGF. But the cascading electrons produce so many gamma rays that they blast electrons and positrons clear out of the atmosphere. This happens when the gamma-ray energy transforms into a pair of particles: an electron and a positron. It's these particles that reach Fermi's orbit. The detection of positrons shows many high-energy particles are being ejected from the atmosphere. In fact, scientists now think that all TGFs emit electron/positron beams. A paper on the findings has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. "The Fermi results put us a step closer to understanding how TGFs work," said Steven Cummer at Duke University. "We still have to figure out what is special about these storms and the precise role lightning plays in the process." NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. It is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. The GBM Instrument Operations Center is located at the National Space Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. The team includes a collaboration of scientists from UAH, NASA's Marshall Space Defense Space Changes Continue with First Secretary of the Air Force-Chaired Council Meeting The Defense Space Council (DSC), created by Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III and chaired by the recently-revalidated DoD Executive Agent for Space, Secretary of the Air Force Michael B. Donley, met for the first time Dec. 20, moving forward on one of several changes in DoD Space governance that was approved Nov. 17. The DSC is the principal advisory forum to inform, coordinate and resolve space issues for DoD. The council will align requirements, acquisition, and budget planning and execution with strategy and policy. These improvements are designed to ensure stronger capabilities, greater efficiencies and a healthier space industrial base. First on the council’s agenda is streamlining the many defense and national security space committees, boards, and councils. The DSC will review more than 15 space-related organizations and recommend their cancellation, consolidation, dissolution, or realignment under the DSC. The formation of the council and its first task were among five recommendations approved by Lynn including the realignment of the National Security Space office and a review of all EA support functions. “These decisions will not only better position DoD to coordinate the implementation of space policy and strategy, they will also provide the framework for DoD’s coordination with the intelligence community on national security space,” Donley announced Nov. 19 at the Air Force Association Global Warfare Symposium. The Air Force is committed to excellence in the space enterprise, both as a core function of the service and on behalf of DoD. The first meeting of the DSC builds upon recent actions that have strengthened DoD’s stewardship of space including a comprehensive review and realignment of Headquarters Air Force space management and responsibilities. NASA's Next Mars Rover to Zap Rocks With Laser
December 22, 2010 A rock-zapping laser instrument on NASA's next Mars rover has roots in a demonstration that Roger Wiens saw 13 years ago in a colleague's room at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on the rover Curiosity can hit rocks with a laser powerful enough to excite a pinhead-size spot into a glowing, ionized gas. ChemCam then observes the flash through a telescope and analyzes the spectrum of light to identify the chemical elements in the target. That information about rocks or patches of soil up to about 7 meters (23 feet) away will help the rover team survey the rover's surroundings and choose which targets to drill into, or scoop up, for additional analysis by other instruments on Curiosity. With the 10 science instruments on the rover, the team will assess whether any environments in the landing area have been favorable for microbial life and for preserving evidence about whether life existed. In late 2011, NASA will launch Curiosity and the other parts of the flight system, delivering the rover to the surface of Mars in August 2012. Wiens, a geochemist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, serves as ChemCam's principal investigator. An American and French team that he leads proposed the instrument during NASA's 2004 open competition for participation in the Mars Science Laboratory project, whose rover has since been named Curiosity. In 1997, while working on an idea for using lasers to investigate the moon, Wiens visited a chemistry laboratory building where a colleague, Dave Cremers, had been experimenting with a different laser technique. Cremers set up a cigar-size laser powered by a little 9-volt radio battery and pointed at a rock across the room. "The room was well used. Every flat surface was covered with instruments, lenses or optical mounts," Wiens recalls. "The filing cabinets looked like they had a bad case of acne. I found out later that they were used for laser target practice." Cremers pressed a button. An invisible beam from the laser set off a flash on a rock across the room. The flash was ionized gas, or plasma, generated by the energy from the laser exciting atoms in the rock. A spectrometer pointed at the glowing plasma recorded the intensity of light at different wavelengths for determining the rock's atomic ingredients. Researchers have used lasers for inducing plasmas for decades. What impressed Wiens in this demonstration was the capability to do it with such a low-voltage power source and compact hardware. Using this technology for a robot on another planet seemed feasible. From that point, more than a decade of international development and testing resulted in ChemCam being installed on Curiosity in September 2010. The international collaboration came about in 2001 when Wiens introduced a former Los Alamos post-doctoral researcher, Sylvestre Maurice, to the project. The core technology of ChemCam, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, had been used for years in France as well as in America, but it was still unknown to space scientists there. "The technique is both flashy and very compelling scientifically, and the reviewers in France really liked that combination," Maurice said. A French team was formed, and work on a new laser began. "The trick is very short bursts of the laser," Wiens said. "You really dump a lot of energy onto a small spot -- megawatts per square millimeter -- but just for a few nanoseconds." The pinhead-size spot hit by ChemCam's laser gets as much power focused on it as a million light bulbs, for five one-billionths of a second. Light from the resulting flash comes back to ChemCam through the instrument's telescope, mounted beside the laser high on the rover's camera mast. The telescope directs the light down an optical fiber to three spectrometers inside the rover. The spectrometers record intensity at 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. Different chemical elements in the target emit light at different wavelengths. If the rock has a coating of dust or a weathered rind, multiple shots from the laser can remove those layers to provide a clear shot to the rock's interior composition. "We can see what the progression of composition looks like as we get a little bit deeper with each shot," Wiens said. Earlier Mars rover missions have lacked a way to identify some of the lighter elements, such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, lithium and boron, which can be clues to past environmental conditions in which the rock was formed or altered. After NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit examined an outcrop called "Comanche" in 2005, it took years of analyzing indirect evidence before the team could confidently infer the presence of carbon in the rock. A single observation with ChemCam could detect carbon directly. ChemCam will be able to interrogate multiple targets the same day, gaining information for the rover team's careful selection of where to drill or scoop samples for laboratory investigations that will take multiple days per target. It can also check the composition of targets inaccessible to the rover's other instruments, such as rock faces beyond the reach of Curiosity's arm. The instrument's telescope doubles as the optics for the camera part of ChemCam, which records images on a one-megapixel detector. The telescopic camera will show context of the spots hit with the laser and can also be used independently of the laser. The French half of the ChemCam team, headed by Maurice and funded by France's national space agency, provided the instrument's laser and telescope. Maurice is a spectroscopy expert with the Centre d'Étude Spatiale des Rayonnements, in Toulouse, France. Los Alamos National Laboratory supplied the spectrometers and data processor inside the rover. The optical design of the spectrometers came from Ocean Optics, Dunedin, Fla. The ChemCam team includes experts in mineralogy, geology, astrobiology and other fields, with some members also on other Curiosity instrument teams. With the instrument now installed on Curiosity, testing continues at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is assembling the rover and other components of the Mars Science Laboratory flight system for launch from Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011. Space Store
New Generation for Deep Space Network
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA has taken the next step toward a new generation of Deep Space Network antennas. A $40.7 million contract with General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies, San Jose, Calif., covers implementation of two additional 34-meter (112-foot) antennas at Canberra, Australia. This is part of Phase I of a plan to eventually retire the network's aging 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide) antennas. The Deep Space Network (DSN) consists of three communications complexes: in Goldstone, Calif.; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia. The 70-meter antennas are more than 40 years old and are showing signs of surface deterioration from constant use. Additional 34-meter antennas are being installed in Canberra in the first phase; subsequent phases will install additional 34-meter antennas in Goldstone and Madrid. The 34-meter beam waveguide antennas are essential to keep communications flowing smoothly as NASA's fleet of spacecraft continues to expand. In addition, the waveguide design of the antennas provides easier access for maintenance and future upgrades, because sensitive electronics are housed in a below-the-ground pedestal equipment room, instead of in the center of the dish. "As a result of several studies, it was determined that arrays of 34-meter beam waveguide antennas were the best solution to long-term continuation of DSN 70-meter capabilities," said Miguel Marina, who manages the 70-meter replacement task force at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The new antennas are critical communication resources for all current and future NASA missions." NASA expects to complete the building of the first two 34-meter antennas in Canberra by 2016. They will be named Deep Space Stations 35 and 36. Deep Space Station 35 is due to be online in 2014, and Deep Space Station 36 is expected to follow in 2016. In 1958, NASA established the Deep Space Network as a separately managed and operated communications facility to accommodate all deep space missions. This avoided the need for each flight project to acquire its own specialized space communications network. During the Apollo period (1967-1972), these stations supported America's missions to the moon, including the historic first manned landing. The Goldstone antenna, in particular, captured Neil Armstrong's words and sent them on to American television sets while the images came through another antenna. The Deep Space Network is now sending commands to numerous robotic spacecraft, such as NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Saturn explorer Cassini and the two Voyager spacecraft, which are near the edge of the solar system. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Deep Space Network for NASA Headquarters, Washington. More information about the Deep Space Network is online at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov . More information about NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program is at: https://www.spacecomm.nasa.gov
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NASA Selects United Negro College Fund To Help Build Science Careers
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected the United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corp. of Falls Church, Va., to administer a $1 million career development and educational program designed to address the critical shortage of U.S. minority students in science and engineering fields. The NASA Astrobiology Institute's (NAI) Minority Institution Research Support (MIRS) program in Moffett Field, Calif., is providing the funding for the four-year effort. The program will provide opportunities for up to four faculty members and eight students from minority-serving institutions to partner with astrobiology investigators. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and the future of life on Earth and the potential for life elsewhere. "Providing new education opportunities for minority students will both enrich lives and answer a critical need for proficiency in science and engineering," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "But just as importantly, the program is an investment to cultivate imaginative thinking about the field of astrobiology." The United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corp. will use its extensive database of 14,000 registrants to develop an online community to provide webinars, virtual training and videoconferences, and provide outreach and recruitment for program participants. The program's objective is to engage more teachers from under-represented schools in astrobiology research and increase the number of students pursuing careers in astrobiology. "Our nation's underserved populations are a tremendous resource on which we must draw, not just for science, but for everything we do," said Carl Pilcher, director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute. "We are extremely pleased that the NAI MIRS program will continue contributing under the leadership of such a strong and experienced partner." Founded in 1998, NAI is a partnership between NASA, 14 U.S. teams of universities and other organizations, and six international consortia. NAI's goals are to promote, conduct, and lead interdisciplinary astrobiology research, train a new generation of astrobiology researchers, and share the excitement of the field. NAI is part of NASA's Astrobiology Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. The institute initiated the MIRS program in 2002 as part of its mission to help train a new generation of researchers in astrobiology and increase diversity within the astrobiology community.
Projected Losses of Arctic Sea-Ice and Polar Bear Habitat may be Reduced if Greenhouse Gas Emissions are Stabilized
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Sea-ice habitats essential to polar bears would likely respond positively should more curbs be placed on global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new modeling study published today in the journal, Nature. The study, led by the U.S. Geological Survey, included university and other federal agency scientists. The research broke new ground in the “tipping point” debate in the scientific community by providing evidence that during this century there does not seem to be a tipping point at which sea-ice loss would become irreversible. The report does not affect the decision made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2008 to list the polar bear as a threatened species. This new study builds and expands upon studies published by the USGS in 2007. The new study evaluates additional scenarios in which greenhouse gas emissions are reduced in comparison to the business-as-usual scenario that was exclusively used in the previous research. Modeling outcomes for the additional scenarios provided evidence that the projected continuation of Arctic sea-ice decline could be altered if greenhouse gas emissions were mitigated in a manner that stabilizes atmospheric CO2 levels at or less than around 450 parts per million. Current CO2 levels are around 390 ppm. The 2007 studies by the USGS had projected that under the business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions scenario, future reduction of Arctic sea ice could result in a loss of two-thirds of the world's polar bear population by mid-century. They had also shown that under this scenario, loss of sea ice would have such a drastic negative effect on polar bears that other efforts to reduce stress on their populations would have negligible benefits. Other stress factors considered in the modeling include disease and predation, overutilization, contaminants, tourism, bear-human interactions, oil and gas activity, and shipping. The earlier study did not examine other greenhouse gas emission scenarios. The new analyses published in the journal, Nature, indicate that with lower greenhouse gas emissions, coupled with reductions in other population stressors, polar bears could persist in all four ecoregions where they presently occur, said Steve Amstrup, lead author of the study and a scientist emeritus with the USGS Alaska Science Center. Amstrup noted that their new work emulated the rapid sea-ice loss that occurred in the Arctic between September 2006 and September 2007 when the loss of sea ice equaled the total amount of ice lost during the previous 27 years. This exponential loss of ice during such a short time was one of the reasons why so many scientists were concerned that there might be a tipping point beyond which sea ice would be irreversibly lost. “Instead, we found that the relationship between the loss of sea ice and the average global temperature is linear,” said Amstrup. “In fact, the models indicate that major losses of summer sea ice can occur without pushing ice into a tipping point with permanent ice-free summers. If such a tipping point had existed, it would have meant that efforts to reduce greenhouse gases would have had little value in stemming the loss of polar ice critical for polar bears.” Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform to hunt seals, their primary food. Current declines in habitat have been associated with declines in body stature, survival rates, and population size in broad areas of the current polar bear range. The new paper, Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce sea-ice loss and increase polar bear persistence, will be published by the journal, Nature, on December 16. The study was authored by Steve Amstrup (USGS), Eric DeWeaver (National Science Foundation), David Douglas (USGS), Bruce Marcot (USDA Forest Service), George Durner (USGS), Cecilia Bitz (University of Washington), and David Bailey (National Center for Atmospheric Research). Polar Bears Christmas
Tattered Wings: Bats Grounded by White-Nose Syndrome’s Lethal Effects on Life-Support Functions of Wings Madison, Wisconsin—Damage to bat wings from the fungus associated with white-nose syndrome (WNS) may cause catastrophic imbalance in life-support processes, according to newly published research. This imbalance may be to blame for the more than 1 million deaths of bats due to WNS thus far, proposes Carol Meteyer, a pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center and a lead author of the research published in BMC Biology. Physiological problems caused by the novel fungus, may, in fact, represent a completely new disease paradigm for mammals, Meteyer and her colleagues wrote. Other skin infections in mammals due to fungi (ringworm, athlete’s foot) remain superficial and do not invade living tissue—typically they only affect the surface of skin, hair and nails. Not so for the aptly named Geomyces destructans. Related Podcasts Tattered Wings: Bats Grounded by White-Nose Syndrome’s Lethal Effects on Life-Support Functions of Wings “This fungus is amazingly destructive — it digests, erodes, and invades the skin — particularly the wings — of hibernating bats,” said Meteyer. “The ability of this fungus to invade bats’ wing skin is unlike that of any known skin fungal pathogen in land mammals.” The authors examined nearly 200 bats that had died from WNS, and also reviewed the critical function and physiology of bat wings during hibernation. As a result, they propose that G. destructans may cause unsustainable dehydration in hibernating bats, triggering thirst-associated arousals. In addition to the direct damage to the wings that would alter flight control, the erosion and invasion of skin may also cause significant changes in circulation, body-temperature regulation and respiratory function. Since signs of the disease were first observed in New York during the winter of 2006-07, the fungus has spread through 11 states and 2 Canadian provinces, resulting in the first sustained high-mortality disease affecting bats in recorded history. Biologists assume that as the disease spreads to new areas, cave-hibernating bats in those areas will also be at risk, including some that are endangered. “The high number of bat deaths and range of species being affected far exceeds the rate and magnitude of any previously known natural or human-caused mortality event in bats, and possibly in any other mammals,” said Paul Cryan, a lead author of the paper and a USGS bat ecologist at the Fort Collins Science Center. Although the powdery white muzzles of affected bats gave the disease its name, the authors believe that the skin of bat wings is the most significant, though often less obvious, target of the fungus. The order of bats is called Chiroptera, Greek for “hand-wing,” appropriately named since bat wings are essentially modified arms. Imagine, for a moment, your human hand with its fingers spread apart. Then imagine your fingers are 6 feet long, and the whole skeletal affair is covered with two layers of thin, somewhat transparent membranes attached to the sides of your torso and legs. Sandwiched between the membranes are blood and lymphatic vessels, delicate nerves, muscles and special connective tissues that help you fly and help keep you physiologically healthy. “The disproportionately large areas of exposed skin that make up bat wings play critical roles in maintaining safe internal body conditions during hibernation,” noted Cryan. “Healthy wings are essential for day-to-day survival, even during winter when bats are mostly just hanging around. Wings damaged by the fungus may not always look so bad to the naked eye, but under the microscope things get ugly fast.” When Meteyer examined wings of diseased bats microscopically, she discovered wing damage was often so severe that it led her and her colleagues to suggest multiple life-threatening effects on hibernating bats. “A bat’s wings,” said Meteyer, “are obviously critical for flying, but they also play a vital part in essential functions such as body temperature, blood pressure, water balance and blood and gas circulation and exchange.” Healthy bats occasionally rouse themselves from hibernation, probably to change roosts, drink, mate and even overcome sleep deprivation, biologists think. But bats afflicted with WNS arouse much more often. In fact, a characteristic of hibernation sites with WNS is daytime flights of affected bats outside caves. “The prevailing hypothesis is that daytime winter flight is a last-ditch effort for starving bats to find insect prey,” Cryan said. “What we propose is that thirst, and maybe not always hunger, is driving these arousals. Unusual thirst during hibernation may result from water essentially leaking out of wings damaged by the fungus.” Anecdotally, bats at hibernacula affected by WNS are sometimes seen flying over and drinking from water surfaces or eating snow, highlighting the plausibility of this hypothesis, the authors noted. Hibernation itself is one reason this emerging disease is so successful. During hibernation, a bat’s immune function and metabolism are dramatically reduced, and body temperature drops significantly. Also, some of the worst-affected bat species roost in humid areas in dense clusters to conserve energy and decrease moisture loss. “These ideal environmental conditions, combined with the hibernating bat’s suppressed immune system, likely allow the fungus to invade body tissues for nutrients without resistance, making the hibernating bat a most accommodating host for this new disease,” Meteyer said. The researchers compare the ability of this novel bat fungus to destabilize internal functions with the electrolyte imbalance that occurs in frogs infected by chytrid fungus, which, like G. destructans, is a novel disease of vertebrates. Chytrid infection impairs the ability of frog skin to regulate hydration and internal equilibrium, causing electrolyte imbalance and ultimately cardiac arrest. “The skin plays a critical role in the physiology of both amphibians and bats,” Meteyer said. “We suggest that a similar, but less subtle, disturbance could be occurring in the wing membranes of bats with WNS.” Rodan spotted in Texas, sez scientist
Unmasking a Flying Predator in Texas LONG BEACH, Calif., Dec. 6, 2010 — For generations, the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas, have entertained residents with their strange dancing. On some warmer nights, a ball of light seems to split into two, which will separate and fly away from each other before turning around and flying back together. They have recently been linked to flying lights in the southwest Pacific, lights that natives of Papua New Guinea testify are from large flying creatures. In southwest Texas, local residents have speculated about dancing devils or ghosts. Scientists have preferred something along the lines of ball lightning or earthlights, but all their scientific explanations have tripped over the resemblances to line dancing. If atmospheric energies or tectonic stresses cause the displays, why do two lights horizontally separate for a long distance before coming back together? Now a cryptozoologist from California has explained the dancing lights of Marfa. Tales of spooks may hold a spark of truth, for recent research implies intelligence directs the lights: Bioluminescent flying predators may be hunting at night and catching a few unlucky Big Brown Bats: Eptesicus fuscus. According to Jonathan Whitcomb, a cryptozoology author in Long Beach, California, when one of the bioluminescent predators has been glowing for awhile, not far above the ground, it will be joined by another of its kind, which will then turn on its own glow. After insects have been attracted to that area, the two creatures will separate, which appears to distant human observers to be one light splitting into two. The predators will fly away from each other for some distance, then turn back and fly together. During the separation, bats may begin feeding on the concentration of insects before being caught from two sides by the larger predators. Whitcomb was a forensic videographer, in 2004, when he traveled to Papua New Guinea, hoping to videotape the glowing nocturnal “ropen,” said to be a large flying predator and scavenger. Although he did not see the creature, he interviewed many natives, who impressed him with their credibility and amazed him with what they had seen. Whitcomb became convinced that the ropen is a pterosaur, commonly called by Americans “pterodactyl” or “flying dinosaur.” After returning to the United States, he wrote many web pages about the concept of modern living pterosaurs in the southwest Pacific. He was surprised at the response: emails and phone calls from eyewitnesses of apparent pterosaurs in the United States. He analyzed the eyewitness accounts of those flying creatures and wrote a nonfiction book: “Live Pterosaurs in America.” The second edition of that cryptozoology book has just been published (ISBN-13: 9781456341350). Although Whitcomb admits that Marfa Lights may come from an unknown bioluminescent bird or bat, he says, “It is more likely than not from a creature similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea, and my associates and I are sure about the ropen: It is a pterosaur.” The World Is Running Out of Fishing Grounds, New Study Shows EINNEWS, December 3---An expanding world population is developing an increasing appetite for fish. And that's a problem for both people and the fish. A study published Thursday indicates that the world's fishing industry in running out of new ocean fishing grounds, and that is depleting older ones through unsustainable harvesting practices. The study was conducted by researchers at Vancouver's University of British Columbia in conjunction with the National Geographic magazine. "We knew the expansion was going on, but this is the first time we have quantified it," said Daniel Pauly, a scientist at the Vancouver-based university who co-authored the report published in the online journal PLoS ONE. The study says that 90 million tons of fish were landed in the late 1980s, up from 19 million in the 1950s. Using advanced computer models, the researchers tracked the expansion of fishing activity that examine both the total number of fish caught and the impact that catching different types of fish has had on the ocean's productivity. By the late 1990s, the world's fishing fleets had largely run out of new fishing grounds to exploit, the researchers said. "The sooner we come to grips with it, the sooner we can stop the downward spiral by creating stricter fishing regulations and more marine reserves," co-author Enric Sala said in a statement. The researchers said that in 1950 most heavy fishing was done in the North Atlantic and the Western Pacific, but by the mid 1990s, a third of the world's oceans and two-thirds of the continental shelves were exploited. That expansion has left only unproductive fishing areas on the high seas and the ice-covered waters of the Arctic and Antarctic for boats to move into. Gaming Console Supercomputer Can Read, Correct Input By Ian Graham WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2010 – Video games have advanced by leaps and bounds in the past few years. What once was a big black box with a bad video version of ping-pong is now a sleek, motion-capturing, high-resolution computer system capable of networking around the world. Mark Barnell, director of high-performance computing and the Condor Cluster project at the Air Force Research Laboratory, has used that technology to create a new supercomputer. The Condor Cluster, a heterogeneous supercomputer built from off-the-shelf commercial components -- including 1,716 Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles -- could change the supercomputing landscape, Barnell said yesterday in a “DOD Live” bloggers roundtable. The system computes operations by the trillions per second –- called “teraflops” in the computing world. Some supercomputers can operate at a quadrillion calculations per second, or a “petaflop.” Barnell said the Condor Cluster also represents new ways for supercomputers to increase computational resources while using less energy. Barnell said it’s currently the seventh-greenest computer in the world. “This particular system is about half a petaflop, or capable of about 500 trillion calculations per second,” he said. “In the current time that we can measure it, it's about the 35th- or 36th-fastest computer in the world, and with some things that are going to be changing in the next eight or nine months with some upgrades, we could boost it to maybe the 20th-fastest computer in the world, and at the same time make it, at that moment in time, the greenest computer.” The Condor Cluster isn’t designed to compete with the world’s largest supercomputers, he said. The Condor Cluster, which cost $2 million to build, is made for more specific tasks. The cheapest comparable supercomputers would cost $50 million to $80 million, he said. The highly advanced Cray supercomputers are in the $100 million range. “So from a price performance, we'd probably beat all of them, but the biggest thing for us was the particular applications and the hardware we chose to build this computer with purposely matches those applications well,” Barnell said. “Some of the systems that you might refer to in the top 10 in the world are more of a general-purpose computer and also run applications that we may not. We're just going to coexist and do some things that we need to get done with this particular supercomputer.” One area the Condor Cluster is being used in is neuromorphic computing, or “computational intelligence.” Essentially, programmers write algorithms to “teach” the computer how to read symbols, letters, words and sentences. By programming the computer to read, in theory it can be taught to fill in gaps and “think” on its own. The idea is that the computer, when taking in millions of lines of data, could fill in gaps or rearrange the pages in case of human error. The Condor Cluster can read 20 pages of information per second, and even with 20 to 30 percent of the characters on the page removed, can recover all of the sentences and words with about 99.9 percent accuracy, Barnell said. The discoveries this computer could lead to would change the face of computer science, he added. “We have quite a few research and development efforts, working on those kinds of applications to do confabulation and prediction,” he said. “That will open up a variety of areas which could help a lot of other efforts and a lot of the areas in which the Air Force would like to go.” Lazy Video Game Player
Army Researchers Study Computer, Human Networks By Jian DeLeon WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2010 – Computer networks and social networks depend on interaction between individuals –- whether it’s individual machines or human beings. The science of these complex interactions shares some common underlying themes, and a team of Army researchers hopes that examining these networks will provide feasible solutions. “Today's warfare and all types of military activities are truly permeated, if you wish, with networks. The most obvious ones are computer networks and communication networks, and our soldiers use them constantly and for numerous purposes in numerous diverse ways,” Alexander Kott, chief of the Army Research Laboratory’s network science division, said yesterday during a "DOD Live" bloggers roundtable. Kott said his position focuses on network-related phenomena and serves him well in his other role as manager of the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance, a program initiated by the Army about a year ago, which involves about 27 universities, a few companies, and about 200 researchers who look at the basic science of networks. Despite being well-versed in the technology of networks, Kott said, modern soldiers aren’t just interacting with computer systems. “Our soldiers also deal on a daily basis with even more important genre of networks -- human networks, networks of humans connected by complex social and coordinative links,” he said. These social links that can be challenging to traverse, he added, noting that troops often have to deal with cultural, ideological and adversarial issues in addition to negotiating between civilians and local governments. This complex interactivity between various tangible resources can be problematic, he said. "All these different genres of networks -- they're not inert masses,” he said. “They are not something pre-engineered and constant. They are living, evolving creatures. They live their mysterious lives. They grow. They shrink. They branch out. They merge. They have these mysterious interactions between themselves and within themselves. They are complex, adaptive systems. They produce all kinds of puzzling, nonlinear, difficult-to-predict behaviors.” To ensure network reliability, the Army is looking into a technology known as disruption-tolerant networking, said Robert Cole of the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center. “That's a technology that will be important in future Army networks,” Cole said. This focus on reliable and stable communications, he explained, is why the Army has been hesitant to adapt commercial technologies such as cellular communication, which could be compromised on the battlefield despite recent advances in smart phone technology. “Cellular communications means you have to have some type of cell phone towers on the battlefield,” Kott said, “and they are tremendously attractive and vulnerable targets.” However, he added, the military does see the tactical advantage such a communication tool would provide, and is working toward adapting a more dependable, less vulnerable version of that technology. “The Army has been investing research and developing the mobile, ad hoc networks where every radio on the battlefield is known in the network and you are not reliant on a cell-phone tower or one node. … Of course, many of the features of the smart phones that are so attractive today and will grow, [and] inevitably, certainly will be explored in our military networks as well,” he said. Researchers also are conducting projects to directly benefit ground teams in Afghanistan and Iraq to give them an advantage in both combat and noncombat situations. “For example,” Kott said, “we have recently completed research that shows propagation processes, propagation of influence, propagation of trust and distrust, propagation of beliefs and conviction within human networks. This process can actually be at least partially predictable. It can be modeled. It can be analyzed.” Kott said it’s clear why the Army is moving in this direction. “We are operating on a new battlefield -- a very, very complex, networked battlefield of insurgency in particular,” he said, “where it is so important to understand those complex network phenomena and to be able to influence them. NASA Study Finds Earth's Lakes Are Warming WASHINGTON -- In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth's largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change.Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide. They reported an average warming rate of 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. "Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world," said Schneider, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes." Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake's natural ecosystem. Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth's surface to compute warming trends. More recently, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, accurate view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide. The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They focused on summer temperatures (July-September in the Northern Hemisphere and January-March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the difficulty in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study The bodies studied were selected from a global database of lakes and wetlands based on size (typically at least 193 square miles or larger) or other unique characteristics of scientific merit. The selected lakes also had to have large surface areas located away from shorelines, so land influences did not interfere with the measurements. Satellite lake data were collected from the point farthest from any shoreline. The largest and most consistent area of warming was northern Europe. The warming trend was slightly weaker in southeastern Europe, around the Black and Caspian seas and Kazakhstan. The trends increased slightly farther east in Siberia, Mongolia and northern China. In North America, trends were slightly higher in the southwest United States than in the Great Lakes region. Warming was weaker in the tropics and in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The results were consistent with the expected changes associated with global warming. The satellite temperature trends largely agreed with trends measured by nine buoys in the Great Lakes, Earth's largest group of freshwater lakes in terms of total surface area and volume. The lake temperature trends were also in agreement with independent surface air temperature data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. In certain regions, such as the Great Lakes and northern Europe, water bodies appear to be warming more quickly than surrounding air temperature. Al Ahly Bank returns 200 Egyptian objects
Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, announced that the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) received 200 artifacts from Al-Ahly National Bank yesterday and have stored them in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo for restoration and documentation. Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, said that the recovered collection was stored in the treasury of the bank since the early 20th century and that it included objects from the ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic eras. Among the objects are limestone statuary heads of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman deities such as Horus, Hathor and Ptah, as well as Roman terracotta statues and twenty coins from the Islamic and Modern period. Hawass added that two archaeological and legal committees inspected the collection and confirmed the objects’ authenticity. Dr. Hussein Abdel Bassir, head of the committee who inspected the objects, said that all of the objects, which were stored in three boxes in the bank’s vaults, are totally genuine and most of them are very well preserved. NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Kicks Off Geography Trivia From Space HOUSTON -- Where over the world is NASA astronaut Scott Kelly? Kelly, who will be living aboard the International Space Station for nearly six months, wants to test your knowledge of the world through a geography trivia game on Twitter.The first person to correctly identify the place depicted in his photos will win an autographed copy of the picture. Kelly began his contest at the start of Geography Awareness Week, which continues through Nov. 21. He plans to continue the game for the duration of his flight. Kelly launched to the space station along with two Russian cosmonauts, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka on Oct. 8. He is set to return to Earth March 16, 2011. The orbiting outpost and its six crew members circle Earth more than a dozen times each day, traveling more than 200 miles above Earth at 17,500 mph. During Kelly's stay on station, he will have opportunities to see and photograph various locations on Earth. In fact, part of his job is to capture a kaleidoscope of geographic spots used for scientific analysis of our planet. "From the cupola, which is much like a bay window in a house, we are able to take pictures for many scientific reasons, but also to share with the public what we are learning about the planet on which we live," Kelly said. Kelly announced the contest Nov. 8 by posting the following update from his Twitter account, @StationCDRKelly: "Got game? Be the first to correctly name that inkblot on Earth from space." He posted the first image in the geography contest on Monday, Nov. 15. To play the geography trivia and get other updates from Kelly throughout his mission, follow his Twitter account at: http://www.twitter.com/StationCDRKelly "Expanding our geography knowledge is essential to our economic well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment," Kelly said. "It helps us make sense of our world and allows us to make connections between people and places. Space exploration is a global endeavor, and the International Space Station is the result of these connections." For complete rules of the Geography Trivia from Space contest and more information about the International Space Station, visit:
NASA'S CHANDRA FINDS YOUNGEST NEARBY BLACK HOLE WASHINGTON -- Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have The black hole could help scientists better understand how massive The 30-year-old object is a remnant of SN 1979C, a supernova in the "If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where The scientists think SN 1979C, first discovered by an amateur
However, SN 1979C is different because it is much closer and belongs "This may be the first time the common way of making a black hole has The idea of a black hole with an observed age of only about 30 years Although the evidence points to a newly formed black hole in SN 1979C, "It's very rewarding to see how the commitment of some of the most The results will appear in the New Astronomy journal in a paper by NASA TEST FIRES NEW ROCKET ENGINE FOR COMMERCIAL SPACE VEHICLE BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center in The initial test, the first in a series of three firings, lasted 10 The test was conducted by a joint operations team comprised of "Congratulations to Orbital and Aerojet for successfully completing The AJ26 engine is designed to power the Taurus II space vehicle on "With this first test, Stennis not only demonstrates its versatility In addition to the Orbital partnership, Stennis also conducts testing Two NASA Spacecraft Begin New Exploration Assignments WASHINGTON -- Two NASA spacecraft have been assigned a new mission after successfully completing their original science objectives earlier this year. The duo began making observations this week to study how solar wind electrifies, alters and erodes the moon's surface. Data could reveal valuable information for future explorers and give planetary scientists a hint of what's happening on other worlds around the solar system.The new mission is called ARTEMIS, or Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of Moon's Interaction with the Sun. ARTEMIS uses two of five in-orbit spacecraft from NASA's THEMIS, or Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms, mission. "Using two repurposed satellites for the ARTEMIS mission highlights NASA's efficient use of the nation's space assets," said Dick Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. ARTEMIS will measure solar wind turbulence on scales never sampled by previous missions. Solar wind is a stream of charged particles emitted from the upper atmosphere of the sun. "ARTEMIS will provide a unique two-point view of the moon's under-explored space environment," said Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), principal investigator of the THEMIS mission. "These two spacecraft are headed for an incredible new adventure." One ARTEMIS spacecraft reached what is called the L2 Lagrange point on the far side of the moon on Aug. 25. On Oct. 22, the other spacecraft entered the L1 Lagrange point on the Earth-side of the moon. Lagrange points are places where the gravity of Earth and moon balance, creating a sort of gravitational parking spot for spacecraft. NASA repositioned the two outermost THEMIS spacecraft using spare on-board fuel and a set of complex orbit maneuvers over the course of more than a year. "ARTEMIS is going where no spacecraft have gone before," said Manfred Bester, Mission Operations manager from the University of California at Berkeley, where the spacecraft are operated. "We are exploring the Earth-Moon Lagrange points for the first time." After six months at the Lagrange points, ARTEMIS will move closer to the moon. The spacecraft will be approximately 62 miles from the surface at first, but will eventually move closer. From point-blank range, the spacecraft will look to see how the solar wind impacts a rocky world when there's no magnetic field to protect it. Earth is protected from solar wind by its magnetic field. However, the moon is exposed because it has no global magnetism. The ARTEMIS mission is a joint effort among NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley; and UCLA. Launched in 2007, THEMIS was NASA's first five-satellite mission launched aboard a single rocket. The unique constellation of satellites provided scientists with data to help resolve the mystery of how Earth's magnetosphere stores and releases energy from the sun by triggering geomagnetic substorms. The three remaining THEMIS satellites continue to study substorms that are visible in the Northern Hemisphere as a sudden brightening of the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis. The mission was one of NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed missions in the Explorers Program. ATK, formerly Swales Aerospace, in Beltsville, Md., built the THEMIS probes. Goddard manages the program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. Orion This short astronomy video introduces the constellation Orion and M42, the Orion Nebula. Interesting stars in and around the constellation ... all » include Betelgeuse, Rigel and Sirius. Light year as a unit of distance is mentioned. Intended to support astronomy curriculum, grades 4 to 9. http://hilaroad.com/video/ Visit http://hilaroad.com/camp/projects.html for related projects including a starfinder. Discovery Channel Store First Commercial Spaceliner Makes History and Launches New National Geographic Channel Series Virgin Galactic Exclusive Documentary Coverage of Historic Milestones on Path to Space Tourism
WASHINGTON and MOJAVE, Calif., Oct. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- History was made Sunday, October 10, on the path to the launch of the first commercial spaceliner with news of the first successful glide involving the mother ship, WhiteKnightTwo, and smaller spaceship, the VSS Enterprise, which safely separated at an altitude of 40,000 feet before returning to earth. The process of reaching this milestone has been documented for the premiere of National Geographic Channel's (NGC) highly anticipated four-part series, Virgin Galactic, which is documenting the historic process and milestones leading up to the first commercial space flight. Premiering Monday, October 18, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NGC, Virgin Galactic provides exclusive documentary coverage of maverick entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and legendary aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan as they strive to be first to make space tourism an everyday reality. Also included in the premiere episode will be the backstory of the venture, including Rutan's win of the Ansari X Prize with SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnightOne. "This series represents what we are all about — historic drama and adventure," commented Steve Burns, NGC's executive vice president of content. "We are honored to provide people with a window into the historic work of the incredible team at Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites as well as the vision of Burt Rutan and Richard Branson, whose drive and passion promise to make space travel a reality." NASA MISSION TO ASTEROID GETS HELP FROM HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
from Webmaster B. javamanmonk: looks like Hubble needs a new set of glasses, is the image blurry or is it my eyes? lol WASHINGTON -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of the large asteroid Vesta that will help scientists refine plans for the Dawn spacecraft's rendezvous with Vesta in July 2011. Scientists have constructed a video from the images that will help improve pointing instructions for Dawn as it is placed in a polar orbit around Vesta. Analyses of Hubble images revealed a pole orientation, or tilt, of approximately four degrees more to the asteroid's east than scientists previously thought. This means the change of seasons between the southern and northern hemispheres of Vesta may take place about a month later than previously expected while Dawn is orbiting the asteroid. The result is a change in the pattern of sunlight expected to illuminate the asteroid. Dawn needs solar illumination for imaging and some mapping activities. "While Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the sky, its small size makes it difficult to image from Earth," said Jian-Yang Li, a scientist participating in the Dawn mission from the University of Maryland in College Park. "The new Hubble images give Dawn scientists a better sense of how Vesta is spinning because our new views are 90 degrees different from our previous images. It's like having a street-level view and adding a view from an airplane overhead." The recent images were obtained by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in February. The images complemented previous ones of Vesta taken from ground-based telescopes and Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 between 1983 and 2007. Li and his colleagues looked at 216 new images -- and a total of 446 Hubble images overall -- to clarify how Vesta was spinning. The journal Icarus recently published the report online. "The new results give us food for thought as we make our way toward Vesta," said Christopher Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Because our goal is to take pictures of the entire surface and measure the elevation of features over most of the surface to an accuracy of about 33 feet, or the height of a three-story building, we need to pay close attention to the solar illumination. It looks as if Vesta is going to have a late northern spring next year, or at least later than we planned." Launched in September 2007, Dawn will leave Vesta to encounter the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. Vesta and Ceres are the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists study these celestial bodies as examples of the building blocks of terrestrial planets like Earth. Dawn is approximately 134 million miles away from Vesta. Next summer, the spacecraft will make its own measurements of Vesta's rotating surface and allow mission managers to pin down its axis of spin. "Vesta was discovered just over 200 years ago, and we are excited now to be on the threshold of exploring it from orbit," said Bob Mase, Dawn's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "We planned this mission to accommodate our imprecise knowledge of Vesta. Ours is a journey of discovery and, with our ability to adapt, we are looking forward to collecting excellent science data at our target." The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. Several international space organizations are part of the mission team. Vesta Video Patent Drawing for a Flying Machine, 10/05/1869
Dated October 5, 1869, this is the printed patent drawing for a "Flying Machine" invented by W. F. Quinby. Man's Early Quest to Fly Early attempts to create a machine that could fly were noble, but not always successful. We laugh at these trial and error endeavors now, but these inventors and aviators are the forerunners of our modern space age. Thank God for the courage and endeavors of our civilians and our military to keep on trying. Wright Brothers Airplane Flight 1903 The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 This short video montage honors the events of the Apollo 11 Mission. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA released partially restored video of a series of 15 memorable moments from the July 20 moonwalk. The source material for the restoration project is the best of the available broadcast-format video. Lowry Digital, Burbank, Calif., is significantly enhancing the video using the company’s proprietary software technology and other restoration techniques. The video is part of a larger restoration project that will be completed in September and provide a newly restored high definition video of the entire Apollo 11 moonwalk. The completed restoration will provide the public with the highest quality video of this historic event Atmosphere Checked, One Mars Year Before a Landing
PASADENA, Calif. -September 29, 2010- What will the Martian atmosphere be like when the next Mars rover descends through it for landing in August of 2012? An instrument studying the Martian atmosphere from orbit has begun a four-week campaign to characterize daily atmosphere changes, one Mars year before the arrival of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. A Mars year equals 687 Earth days. The planet's thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide is highly repeatable from year to year at the same time of day and seasonal date during northern spring and summer on Mars. The Mars Climate Sounder instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter maps the distribution of temperature, dust, and water ice in the atmosphere. Temperature variations with height indicate how fast air density changes and thus the rates at which the incoming spacecraft slows down and heats up during its descent. "It is currently one Mars year before the Mars Science Laboratory arrival season," said atmospheric scientist David Kass of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This campaign will provide a set of observations to support the Mars Science Laboratory engineering team and Mars atmospheric modelers. The information will constrain the expected climate at their landing season. It will also help define the range of possible weather conditions on landing day." During the four years the Mars Climate Sounder has been studying the Martian atmosphere, its observations have seen conditions only at about three in the afternoon and three in the morning. For the new campaign, the instrument team is inaugurating a new observation mode, looking to both sides as well as forward. This provides views of the atmosphere earlier and later in the day by more than an hour, covering the range of possible times of day that the rover will pass through the atmosphere before landing. Cosmic Lens Used to Probe Dark Energy for First Time
PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have devised a new method for measuring perhaps the greatest puzzle of our universe -- dark energy. This mysterious force, discovered in 1998, is pushing our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds. For the first time, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope were able to take advantage of a giant magnifying lens in space -- a massive cluster of galaxies -- to narrow in on the nature of dark energy. Their calculations, when combined with data from other methods, significantly increase the accuracy of dark energy measurements. This may eventually lead to an explanation of what the elusive phenomenon really is. "We have to tackle the dark energy problem from all sides," said Eric Jullo, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's important to have several methods, and now we've got a new, very powerful one." Jullo is lead author of a paper on the findings appearing in the Aug. 20 issue of the journal Science. Scientists aren't clear about what dark energy is, but they do know that it makes up a large chunk of our universe -- about 72 percent. Another chunk, about 24 percent, is thought to be dark matter, also mysterious in nature but easier to study than dark energy because of its gravitational influence on matter that we can see. The rest of the universe, a mere four percent, is the stuff that makes up people, planets, stars and everything made up of atoms. In their new study, the science team used images from Hubble to examine a massive cluster of galaxies, named Abell 1689, which acts as a magnifying, or gravitational, lens. The gravity of the cluster causes galaxies behind it to be imaged multiple times into distorted shapes, sort of like a fun house mirror reflection that warps your face. Using these distorted images, the scientists were able to figure out how light from the more distant, background galaxies had been bent by the cluster -- a characteristic that depends on the nature of dark energy. Their method also depends on precise ground-based measurements of the distance and speed at which the background galaxies are traveling away from us. The team used these data to quantify the strength of the dark energy that is causing our universe to accelerate. "What I like about our new method is that it's very visual," said Jullo. "You can literally see gravitation and dark energy bend the images of the background galaxies into arcs." According to the scientists, their method required multiple, meticulous steps. They spent the last several years developing specialized mathematical models and precise maps of the matter -- both dark and "normal" -- constituting the Abell 1689 cluster. "We can now apply our technique to other gravitational lenses," said co-author Priya Natarajan, a cosmologist at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. "We're exploiting a beautiful phenomenon in nature to learn more about the role that dark energy plays in our universe." Other authors of the paper include Jean-Paul Kneib and Carlo Schimd of the Université de Provence, France; Anson D'Aloisio of Yale University; Marceau Limousin of Université de Provence and University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Johan Richard of Durham University, United Kingdom. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute, operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. in Washington, conducts Hubble science operations. NOAA and Partners: Decades of Research Find ‘Unprecedented’ Change in Lake Michigan The complex network of predators and prey that inhabit Lake Michigan has changed so drastically in recent decades that future trends for the food web are murky, according to scientists at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab (GLERL), the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research (CILER), and other academic partners. These trends are documented in a special issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research. The changes in this network, a system that biologists call the food web, pose an uncertain future for both water quality and fisheries management. Several of their studies show that these trends are driven by non-native mussels that invaded Lake Michigan beginning in the late 1980s. The studies are online now and coming out in print this month. “We do not know what the future holds,” said Gary Fahnenstiel, Ph.D., of GLERL, located in Ann Arbor. “We need to continue monitoring mussel populations, particularly in the cold, offshore regions of the lake, in order to develop realistic and sustainable management goals.” Among the research findings: A paper by GLERL researchers Thomas Nalepa, Steven Pothoven and David Fanslow compares trends of zebra and quagga mussel populations from the 1990s through 2008. Zebra mussels reached a peak in the early 2000s and then declined. Quagga mussels were first found in the southern portion of Lake Michigan in 2001 and have continued to increase ever since. In another study, GLERL researchers found that the spring diatom bloom has declined 87 percent since 1983 in the southeastern portion of Lake Michigan. Diatoms are a calorie-rich phytoplankton group that serves as an important food resource for many invertebrates in the lake. Researchers attributed the steep decline to invasive mussels that consume this phytoplankton as they filter water. GLERL researchers Henry Vanderploeg, Fahnenstiel, Pothoven and Nalepa worked with David Klarer of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Don Scavia of CILER at the University of Michigan on this study. Researchers calculated the rates at which quagga mussels consume phytoplankton at different depths. They conclude that the 2003-2004 expansion of quagga mussels into deeper water explains the disappearance of the spring phytoplankton bloom. GLERL researchers James Liebig, Vanderploeg, Fahnenstiel, Nalepa and Pothoven conducted this study. A study by Pothoven, Fahnenstiel and Vanderploeg measured declines of up to 81 percent in the abundance of a tiny freshwater shrimp. The scientists noted that the observed decrease in the shrimp population size could be influenced by declining phytoplankton populations that reduce the shrimp’s food supply. They also noted that fish may be grazing on shrimp at higher rates due to declining zooplankton, which are typically a staple of the fish diet. The future of the Lake Michigan ecosystem will ultimately depend on the eventual stabilization of the invasive quagga mussel population. These mussels are rapidly expanding into deeper colder waters, but are expected to decline and reach a stable level in the future. “The Lake Michigan analyses, carefully documented in this special issue, should make people sit up and take notice, once the ecosystem impacts of the invasive mussels are seen together in this comprehensive sense,” said Marie Colton, Ph.D., director of GLERL. With much unknown about how quickly and how far the mussels will expand their range, the scientists say they need to continue long-term monitoring and research efforts, coupled with active involvement of resource managers to develop appropriate management actions. LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules' locations evident. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, was able to image five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks. The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution. Although these pictures provide a reminder of past NASA exploration, LRO's primary focus is on paving the way for the future. By returning detailed lunar data, the mission will help NASA identify safe landing sites for future explorers, locate potential resources, describe the moon's radiation environment and demonstrate new technologies. "Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the moon." The spacecraft's current elliptical orbit resulted in image resolutions that were slightly different for each site but were all around four feet per pixel. Because the deck of the descent stage is about 12 feet in diameter, the Apollo relics themselves fill an area of about nine pixels. However, because the sun was low to the horizon when the images were made, even subtle variations in topography create long shadows. Standing slightly more than ten feet above the surface, each Apollo descent stage creates a distinct shadow that fills roughly 20 pixels. The image of the Apollo 14 landing site had a particularly desirable lighting condition that allowed visibility of additional details. The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site, is discernable, as are the faint trails between the module and instrument package left by the astronauts' footprints. Launched on June 18, LRO carries seven scientific instruments, all of which are currently undergoing calibration and testing prior to the spacecraft reaching its primary mission orbit. The LROC instrument comprises three cameras -- two high-resolution Narrow Angle Cameras and one lower resolution Wide Angle Camera. LRO will be directed into its primary mission orbit in August, a nearly-circular orbit about 31 miles above the lunar surface. Goddard built and manages LRO, a NASA mission with international participation from the Institute for Space Research in Moscow. Russia provided the neutron detector aboard the spacecraft.
NASA's LRO Exposes Moon's Complex, Turbulent Youth
PASADENA, Calif. – The moon's surface is more complex than previously thought and was bombarded by two distinct populations of asteroids or comets in its youth, according to three new papers in the Sept. 17 issue of Science that describe data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Two of the papers describe data from LRO's Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment instrument that reveal the complex geologic processes that forged the lunar surface. The data showed previously unseen compositional differences in the crustal highlands, and confirmed the presence of anomalously silica-rich material in five distinct regions. All minerals and rocks absorb and emit energy with unique signatures that reveal their identity and formation mechanisms. For the first time, the Diviner instrument is providing scientists with global, high-resolution infrared maps of the moon, enabling them to make a definitive identification of silicate minerals commonly found within its crust. "Diviner is literally viewing the moon in a whole new light," said Benjamin Greenhagen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lead author of one of the Diviner papers. Lunar geology can be roughly broken down into two categories – the anorthositic highlands, rich in calcium and aluminium, and the basaltic "maria," giant impact basins filled with solidified lava flows that are abundant in iron and magnesium. Both of these crustal rocks are considered the direct result of crystallization from lunar mantle material, the partially molten layer beneath the crust. Diviner's observations have confirmed that most lunar terrains have signatures consistent with compositions in these two broad categories. But they have also revealed lunar soil compositions with more sodium than that of typical anorthosite crust. The widespread nature of these soils reveals that there may have been variations in the chemistry and cooling rate of the magma ocean that formed the early lunar crust, or they could be the result of secondary processing of the early lunar crust. Most impressively, in several locations around the moon, Diviner has detected highly silicic minerals such as quartz, potassium-rich and sodium-rich feldspar -- minerals that are only associated with highly evolved lithologies, or rocks that have undergone extensive magmatic processing. Detection of silicic minerals at these locations is significant, as they occur in areas previously shown to exhibit anomalously high abundances of the element thorium, another proxy for highly evolved lithologies. "The silicic features we've found on the moon are fundamentally different from the more typical basaltic mare and anorthositic highlands," said Timothy Glotch of Stony Brook University, N.Y., lead author of the second Diviner paper. "The fact that we see this composition in multiple geologic settings suggests that there may have been multiple processes producing these rocks." One thing not apparent in the data is evidence for pristine lunar mantle material, which previous studies have suggested may be exposed at some places on the lunar surface. Even in the South Pole Aitken basin, also known as SPA, the largest, oldest, and deepest impact crater on the moon -- deep enough to have penetrated through the crust and into the mantle -- there is no evidence of mantle material. The implications of this are as yet unknown. Perhaps there are no such exposures of mantle material, or maybe they occur in areas too small for Diviner to detect. But it's likely that if the impact that formed this crater did excavate any mantle material, it has since been mixed with crustal material from later impacts inside and outside the basin. "The new Diviner data will help in selecting the appropriate landing sites for potential future robotic missions to return samples from SPA," Greenhagen said. "We want to use these samples to date the SPA-forming impact and potentially study the lunar mantle, so it's important to use Diviner data to identify areas with minimal mixing." In the other paper, lead author James Head of Brown University in Providence, R.I., describes an analysis of a detailed global topographic map of the moon created using LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. This new dataset shows that the older highland impactor population can be clearly distinguished from the younger population in the lunar maria. The highlands have a greater density of large craters, implying that the earlier population of impactors had a proportionally greater number of large fragments than the population characterizing later lunar history, Head said. Head said details about impactor populations on the moon have implications for the earliest history of all the planets in the inner solar system, including Earth. "Like the Rosetta stone, the lunar record can be used to translate the 'hieroglyphics' of the poorly preserved impact record on Earth," he said. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., built and manages the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA mission with international participation from the Institute for Space Research in Moscow. JPL designed, built and operates the Diviner instrument. The University of California, Los Angeles is the home institution of Diviner's principal investigator, David Paige. LOLA was built by Goddard. NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover
Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term program of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in late 2011, and arrive at an intriguing region of Mars in August 2012. The goal of Curiosity, a rolling laboratory, is to assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting microbial life and conditions favorable for preserving clues about life, if it existed. This will help us better understand whether life could have existed on the Red Planet and, if so, where we might look for it in the future. 1. How Big Is It?: The Mini Cooper-sized rover is much bigger than its rover predecessors, Spirit, Opportunity and Sojourner. Curiosity is twice as long (about 2.8 meters, or 9 feet) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004. Sojourner, about the size of a microwave oven, landed in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. 2. Landing--Where and How: In November 2008, possible landing sites were narrowed to four finalists, all linked to ancient wet conditions. NASA will select a site believed to be among the most likely places to hold a geological record of a favorable environment for life. The site must also meet safe-landing criteria. The landing system is similar to a sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. After a parachute slows the rover's descent toward Mars, a rocket-powered backpack will lower the rover on a tether during the final moments before landing. This method allows landing a very large, heavy rover on Mars (instead of the airbag landing systems of previous Mars rovers). Other innovations enable a landing within a smaller target area than previous Mars missions. 3. Toolkit: Curiosity will use 10 science instruments to examine rocks, soil and the atmosphere. A laser will vaporize patches of rock from a distance, and another instrument will search for organic compounds. Other instruments include mast-mounted cameras to study targets from a distance, arm-mounted instruments to study targets they touch, and deck-mounted analytical instruments to determine the composition of rock and soil samples acquired with a powdering drill and a scoop. 4. Big Wheels: Each of Curiosity's six wheels has an independent drive motor. The two front and two rear wheels also have individual steering motors. This steering allows the rover to make 360-degree turns in-place on the Mars surface. The wheels' diameter is double the wheel diameter on Spirit and Opportunity, which will help Curiosity roll over obstacles up to 75 centimeters (30 inches) high. 5. Rover Power: A nuclear battery will enable Curiosity to operate year-round and farther from the equator than would be possible with only solar power. Crescent Moon
A last quarter crescent moon above Earth's horizon is featured in this image photographed by the Expedition 24 crew on the International Space Station. from Webmaster B. javamanmonk: The 2010 International "Observe the Moon Night" was on Saturday, Sept. 18, 2010, but it is fun to observe the moon on just about any evening, get outside tonight and take a look, share your photos with us on Facebook or other social media. Observe the Moon!
09.16.10 - The moon is the Earth's nearest celestial neighbor and a geologic wonderland. There are mountains that are many miles high, lava flows several hundred miles long and enormous lava tubes and craters of every size. It is the brightest object in the night sky and has profoundly influenced the course of human civilization. For early humans, the moon provided lighting for hunting and defined when crops should be planted and harvested. Markings of lunar phases appear in cave paintings in France and defined the arrangement of Stonehenge. The 2010 International "Observe the Moon Night" is happening on Saturday, Sept. 18.
NASA'S LUNAR SPACECRAFT COMPLETES EXPLORATION MISSION PHASE
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, will LRO completed a one-year exploration mission in a polar orbit The mission is turning its attention from exploration objectives to "LRO has been an outstanding success. The spacecraft has performed The LRO team will continue to send data gathered during the last year By the time LRO achieves full mission success in March, and its data "The official start of LRO's science phase should write a new and The spacecraft launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Results from the mission include: new observations of the Apollo LRO also took high resolution pictures of the Lunokhod 1 rover that LRO also supported the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., built and 
MIT scientists observe single ions moving through tiny carbon-nanotube channel Caught in the Act - Fireballs Light up Jupiter ATHLETE Rover Steps Up to Long Desert Trek
How to See the Best Meteor Showers of the Year: Tools, Tips and 'Save the Dates' NASA and ATK Successfully Test Five-Segment Solid Rocket Motor NASA's First Twins to Fly in Space Together NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Two Planets Transiting Same Star A Message from Mercury By Nicole Stott, on August 21st, 2010 Cassini Bags Enceladus 'Tigers' Researchers to unveil car for blind drivers 50 Years of Communications in Space Antennae A Galactic Spectacle NGC 1068 supermassive black hole all these stories in:
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