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Category: SpaceRevolution

  • NASA’s Kepler Finds Extra-Solar Planets Smaller Than Earth

    NASA’s Kepler Finds Extra-Solar Planets Smaller Than Earth

    Over the past year, NASA’s Kepler mission has found hundreds of possible planets outside of our solar system, and even a few candidates for Earth-like planets.

    This week, astronomers revealed that a new system has been found that contains planets smaller than Earth. The new data has been presented in a paper published recently in the journal Nature.

    The planets orbit around a star called Kepler-37, located around 210 light-years from our solar system. The smallest of the planest found, known as Kepler-37b, is only one-third the size of Earth – smaller than the planet Mercury and just slightly larger than Earth’s moon. The planet is not presumed to have an atmosphere, and scientists predict that life on the planet isn’t likely.

    “Even Kepler can only detect such a tiny world around the brightest stars it observes,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA‘s Ames Research Center. “The fact we’ve discovered tiny Kepler-37b suggests such little planets are common, and more planetary wonders await as we continue to gather and analyze additional data.”

    Two other planets were found in the Kepler-37 system. Kepler-37c orbits further out and is slightly smaller than Venus, or around three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d is the furthest planet out, and is around twice the size of Earth. Kepler-37 itself is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun.

    All three of the planets orbit Kepler-37 at less than than the distance between the sun and Mercury. They each also orbit their star in 40 days or less. The surface temperature of Kepler-37b is estimated to be higher than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

    “We uncovered a planet smaller than any in our solar system orbiting one of the few stars that is both bright and quiet, where signal detection was possible,” said Thomas Barclay, lead author of the paper and a Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. “This discovery shows close-in planets can be smaller, as well as much larger, than planets orbiting our sun.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

  • NASA’s Cassini Probe Finds Accelerated Particles Around Saturn

    NASA’s Cassini Probe Finds Accelerated Particles Around Saturn

    NASA this week revealed that a “chance encounter” with solar wind around Saturn has allowed the Cassini probe to detect particles being accelerated to high energy states. The phenomenon is similar to the acceleration of high-energy cosmic rays found coming from supernova remnants just last week.

    The findings, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, show how certain kinds of solar winds can accelerate electrons. NASA in a statement today said that solar wind around Saturn’s magnetic field forms a shockwave that Cassini can use to study the particle acceleration effect.

    “Cassini has essentially given us the capability of studying the nature of a supernova shock in situ in our own solar system, bridging the gap to distant high-energy astrophysical phenomena that are usually only studied remotely,” said Adam Masters, lead researcher on the paper and a researcher at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.

    The detection of electron acceleration around Saturn came just as a strong shockwave was detected by Cassini. The researchers are looking for “quasi-parallel” shockwaves, which occur when a magnetic field and the direction of the shock are closely aligned.

    Shockwaves, such as those from a supernova or solar wind, are common in the universe. When they hit magnetic fields with certain orientations, particles from the shockwave can be accelerated to close the speed of light. These interactions, scientists believe, could be the source of much of the cosmic rays seen in the universe.

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • NASA: Asteroid 2012 Da14 Will Not be Hitting the Earth Today

    NASA: Asteroid 2012 Da14 Will Not be Hitting the Earth Today

    Today at around 2:20 pm EST an asteroid named 2012 da14 will come within 17,200 miles of the surface of Earth. Almost one year ago NASA was able to determine that the asteroid definitely does not pose a danger to the planet, at least not on this approach.

    With the asteroid’s approach so near and the public’s growing awareness of the event, NASA has released another video to try and reassure people that doomsday is not on the way. It’s similar to the “Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday” video the agency released more than a week before the Maya Apocalypse doomsday scenarios predictably fell flat. Besides the obvious duty to assuage public fears, it’s clear NASA finds it valuable to have a record of using science to make predictions that actually come true.

    The new video features James Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, and Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, describing just how scientists know da14 isn’t a danger (hint: they use math) and what an exciting event today’s record-setting close flyby is for astronomers. The OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to launch a probe in 2016 that will visit an asteroid that actually might hit the Earth in the late 22nd century.

    NASA will be streaming live commentary of the asteroid’s approach starting at 2 pm EST.

  • Asteroid Flyby to be Live-Streamed by NASA

    Asteroid Flyby to be Live-Streamed by NASA

    On February 15, tomorrow, an asteroid named 2012 DA14 will fly within several thousand miles of the surface of the Earth. At its closest approach the asteroid will come within 17,200 miles of the Earth’s surface – a harrowingly close miss that comes well within the ring of man-made geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth. The flyby will set a record for closest approach by an object of DA14’s size.

    Though researchers have determined there is no danger posed by the object, the event will be a spectacle for astronomers around the world. Though the asteroid won’t be bright enough to see with the naked eye, those with a telescope or even a good pair of binoculars will be able to spot it.

    For those who can’t observe the asteroid on their own, NASA announced this week that it will be live-streaming coverage of the object’s approach. The broadcast will provide commentary from scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and real-time animation to demonstrate exactly where the asteroid is. A Live view of the asteroid itself will also be featured, assuming the weather over observatories isn’t cloudy.

    The half-hour live-stream will begin tomorrow at 2 pm EST, and can be seen on NASA TV or on the JPL Ustream page. The JPL Ustream will also begin showing footage of the asteroid from Australian and European observatories starting at 12 pm EST. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will stream footage of the asteroid from one of its telescopes starting at 9 pm EST, and researchers there will be taking questions via Twitter.

    (Image courtesy LCOGT/Faulkes)

  • NASA Successfully Launches New Landsat Satellite

    NASA Successfully Launches New Landsat Satellite

    NASA this week successfully launched its Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). An Atlas V rocket was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 1:02 pm EST on Monday, February 11.

    The new satellite will be used, as previous Landsat satellites have, to monitor the earth’s climate and geography. It is the eighth satellite in the Landsat series that has been observing the Earth since 1972. The LDCM’s Operational Land Imager (OLI) will collect data in visible and infrared spectrums, while its Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) will collect data on the heat emitted from the surface of the Earth.

    “Landsat is a centerpiece of NASA’s Earth Science program, and today’s successful launch will extend the longest continuous data record of Earth’s surface as seen from space,” said Charles Bolden, NASA administrator. “This data is a key tool for monitoring climate change and has led to the improvement of human and biodiversity health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery, and agriculture monitoring – all resulting in incalculable benefits to the U.S. and world economy.”

    The satellite deployed its solar arrays 86 minutes after launch. It is currently powering up and will enter a sun-synchronous polar orbit within two months. During the next three months the satellite will be put through its paces during a check-out phase. After that, control of the LDCM will be transferred to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

    “LDCM is the best Landsat satellite ever built,” said Jim Irons, a LDCM project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “The technology will advance and improve the array of scientific investigations and resource management applications supported by Landsat images. I anticipate new knowledge and applications to emerge with an increasing demand for the data.”

  • NASA to Host Google Hangout From the International Space Station

    NASA to Host Google Hangout From the International Space Station

    NASA announced this week that it will host the first-ever Google+ Hangout live from the International Space Station (ISS).

    The Hangout will take place from 11 am to 12 pm EST on February 22. The event will allow NASA fans to interact with astronauts both on Earth and aboard the ISS. Astronauts Kevin Ford, Chris Hadfield, and Tom Marshburn will be on-hand to answer questions about life on the ISS.

    Since only up to 10 people can “Hangout” at one time (though the event will be open for anyone to watch live), NASA is encouraging its social media fans to submit video questions before the Hangout. During the Hangout “several” of these video questions will be chosen to be aired and answered by the ISS station crew and other astronauts. The videos must be uploaded to YouTube with the tag #askAstro and must be 30 seconds or shorter. The deadline for submitting videos is February 12.

    NASA will also take live questions from its social media feeds on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ during the Hangout. The same hashtag, #askAstro, will be used to identify questions during the Hangout. The agency stated that “unique and original questions” are more likely to be answered.

    Though this is the first NASA Hangout from the ISS, it won’t be the last. The agency has stated that it will continue to host Hangouts “with astronauts on the ground and in space, scientists, engineers, and managers on the agency’s missions and milestones.”

  • Earth-Threatening Asteroid to be Visited by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx

    Earth-Threatening Asteroid to be Visited by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx

    One week from today an asteroid will swing within just 17,200 miles of Earth – closer than geosynchronous satellites that orbit the planet. While there is no chance of an impact event on February 15, there are other asteroids that could collide with the Earth sometime in the future.

    To prepare for (and hopefully prevent) such a disaster, NASA has formed the Near-Earth Object (NEO) observations program, which finds and tracks potential celestial threats. The program estimates that there are over 1,300 “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids” (PHA) with a small chance of hitting the Earth someday.

    Today, NASA outlined its next step in better understanding those objects to help researchers more accurately predict the probability of future impacts. In 2016 the agency will launch OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer), a spacecraft designed to visit a PHA and measure its properties.

    The spacecraft will arrive in orbit around an asteroid named 1999 RQ36 in the year 2018. The object is 457 meters across and is also one of most threatening PHAs yet found.

    “For such a large object, it has one of the highest known probabilities of impacting Earth, a 1 in 2,400 chance late in the 22nd century, according to calculations by Steve Chesley, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” said Edward Beshore, deputy principal investigator for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission and a researcher at the University of Arizona.

    The most important measurement the probe will make is of the Yarkovsky effect, which occurs as a result of asteroids heating and cooling.

    “When an asteroid makes a close pass to Earth, the gravitational pull from our planet changes the asteroid’s orbit,” said Beshore. “However, how this change will affect the evolution of the asteroid’s orbit is difficult for us to predict because there are also other small forces continuously acting on the asteroid to change its orbit. The most significant of these smaller forces is the Yarkovsky effect – a minute push on an asteroid that happens when it is warmed up by the sun and then later re-radiates this heat in a different direction as infrared radiation.”

    The magnitude of the effect is difficult to determine from Earth, since asteroids have different sizes, shapes, and compositions. Beshore and his colleagues expect OSIRIS-REx to provide an estimate of the Yarkovsky force on RQ36 twice as precise as current ones. The measurements should help researchers better estimate the effect on other asteroids.

    If new estimates find RQ36 to be an imminent danger to Earth, researchers will have to come up with a way to alter the object’s orbit.

    “There are several mitigation strategies,” said Beshore. “We could explode a small nuclear device close above the surface on one side of the asteroid. This could be very effective – it would vaporize the surface layer, which would then fly off at very high speed, causing a rocket thrust that would shove everything over by a few centimeters per second. This might be plenty to deflect the asteroid. Other strategies include kinetic impactors, where you strike an asteroid very hard with a heavy projectile moving at high speed. In 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission hit comet Tempel 1 with a 370-kilogram (over 815-pound) copper slug at about five kilometers per second (over 11,000 miles per hour), not nearly enough to significantly alter the orbit of the five-kilometer-sized body, but a proof of the technology for this kind of mission. Another idea is to use a gravity tractor – station a spacecraft precisely enough near the asteroid which would gradually deflect it with only its gravitational pull.”

    (Image courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

  • “Strobe Light” Star Spotted by NASA Telescopes

    “Strobe Light” Star Spotted by NASA Telescopes

    NASA this week revealed that astronomers have discovered a mysterious object that acts like a strobe light. The object, named LRLL 54361, releases a flash of light every 25.34 days. Though other objects in the universe have been observed with similar patterns, this one is the most powerful yet seen.

    In a new paper published recently in the journal Nature, astronomers have proposed that the strobe effect is caused by interactions between two very young stars (protostars) that orbit each other (binary star). As material is dumped into the growing binary star, they believe that the flashes are caused by a blast of radiation unleashed when the stars closely approach each other in their orbits. Such an event, known as a pulsed accretion, has been observed before, but never with such regularity or in a system so young. The binary star is estimated to be no more than a few hundred thousand years old.

    “This protostar has such large brightness variations with a precise period that it is very difficult to explain,” said James Muzerolle, co-author of the paper and a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

    LRLL 54361 is located 950 light-years from Earth in a star-forming region named IC 348. The discovery of its strobe-like property was made using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and astronomers used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to confirm the observations and reveal the structure of the system.

    Though the gas and dust surrounding the system prevents it from being observed directly, the Hubble was able to detect two “cavaties” in the material on opposite sides of a central dust disc. Astronomers believe the cavities were created by an outflow from near the binary star.

    (Image courtesy NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/NOAO/University of Arizona/ Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

  • Comet ISON Spotted by NASA’s Deep Impact

    Comet ISON Spotted by NASA’s Deep Impact

    NASA‘s Deep Impact spacecraft has snapped several images of the comet ISON (C/2012 S1). The images were obtained over 36 hours on January 17 and 18, from a distance of 793 million km (493 million miles). The comet is expected to come within 1.8 million km (1.1 million miles) of the sun and burn bright enough to be seen from Earth with the naked eye.

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

    Comet ISON was only just discovered in September of 2012 by Russian astronomers. NASA has determined that the comet is making its first-ever journey into the the inner solar system. Researchers believe that means the object’s surface will have plenty of volatile material that will be burned off by the sun. Long-period comets such as ISON come from the Oort cloud, a cloud of icy objects that surround the solar system at an incredible distance – as far away as one-third the distance to the Sun’s nearest neighbor star.

    NASA has stated that there is no chance comet ISON will be a risk to the Earth. The object’s closest approach to the planet will be on December 26, 2013, and the comet’s head and tail should be visible during its closest approach to the sun.

    In addition to the visible light images seen below, data from Deep Impact is expected to provide researchers with infrared data and light curves for the comet. Though the object is currently over 763 million km (474 million miles) from the Sun, its tail is already estimated to be over 64,400 km (40,000 miles) long.

    Embedded video from

    NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology

  • NASA’s Cosmic Ray-Detecting Balloon Breaks Records

    NASA’s Cosmic Ray-Detecting Balloon Breaks Records

    A NASA balloon has broken the record for longest flight. The balloon, which carries the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER), spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes circling the South Pole at 127,000 feet – over four times the altitude of commercial airplanes. The previous record for a balloon of that size was 46 days.

    The record-breaking balloon also broke the record for longest flight of a heavy-lift scientific balloon, beating the previous record (set by NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon in 2009) by five minutes.

    “This is an outstanding achievement for NASA’s Astrophysics balloon team,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Keeping these huge balloons aloft for such long periods lets us do forefront science that would be difficult to do otherwise.”

    The balloon was held aloft by wind patterns at the South pole. Anticyclonic winds that circulate from east to west in the stratosphere there enable long-duration balloon flights.

    The Super-TIGER instrument aboard the balloon measured rare elements heavier than iron in the cosmic rays that constantly strike the Earth’s atmosphere. The data will be used to research the origins of the particles and how they reach their high energy states. Researchers estimate the device detected 50 million cosmic rays, and that the data will take around two years to fully analyze.

    “This has been a very successful flight because of the long duration, which allowed us to detect large numbers of cosmic rays,” said Bob Binns, principal investigator of the Super-TIGER mission. “The instrument functioned very well.”

  • NASA to Launch ISS Instrument to Monitor Ocean Winds

    NASA to Launch ISS Instrument to Monitor Ocean Winds

    NASA announced this week that it will launch an instrument called the ISS-RapidScat to the International Space Station (ISS) next year to measure ocean winds. The instrument, originally built to test NASA;s QuikScat satellite, will measure the Earth’s ocean surface wind speed and direction. The data will improve weather forecasts and hurricane monitoring.

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

    Scatterometers measure the scattering effect produced when scanning the Earth’s surface using a microwave radar sensor. The previous wind data instrument, the QuikScat, stopped collecting ocean wind data in 2009 after operating for 10 years. No replacement will be available soon, which is why NASA adapted existing QuikScat hardware.

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

    The ISS-RapidScat will be launched to the ISS on a SpaceX Dragon cargo mission. It will be installed on the end of the ISS’s Columbus laboratory and have measurement accuracy “similar” to QuikScat. The instrument is expected operate for two years.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/JSC)

  • NASA to Remember Fallen Astronauts on February 1

    NASA to Remember Fallen Astronauts on February 1

    NASA announced today that its yearly “Day of Remembrance” for fallen astronauts will be held on February 1. The date marks the 10th anniversary of the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Flags at NASA facilities will be flown at half-staff on that day.

    The tribute will be used to honor the astronauts who died while working with the space program. Astronauts from the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, as well Apollo 1 will be a part of the remembrance. An observance will take place at Arlington National Cemetary on February 1, with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other senior NASA officials in attendance.

    A wreath-laying ceremony will also take place that day at 10 am EST at the Space Mirror Memorial in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. The Space Mirror Memorial was dedicated in 1991, to honor astronauts who lost their lives in the space program. It has been declared a National Memorial by the U.S. congress and is maintained by the non-profit Astronauts memorial Foundation, which is also hosting the observance on Friday.

    The Kennedy ceremony will be streaming live on NASA Television. A tribute video for fallen astronauts prepared by NASA can be seen below, and an interactive slideshow is also available.

  • NASA Joins Euclid Dark Universe Mission

    NASA Joins Euclid Dark Universe Mission

    NASA announced this week that it has joined the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid mission. The mission will investigate dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe.

    In 2020, the mission will launch the Euclid space telescope, which will spend six years mapping and measuring as many as 2 billion galaxies that cover one-third of the sky. The hope is that Euclid will be able to provide insight into the evolution of the universe and the influence of dark matter and dark energy.

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

    Though NASA’s part in the Euclid mission is still being developed, the agency will be providing 16 infrared detectors and four spare detectors for one of Euclid’s science instruments.

    The Euclid spacecraft will be launched into orbit around the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, a point where the gravitational pull of the sun and Earth can help the satellite maintain a stationary position behind the Earth. The spacecraft will map dark matter, using precise measurements of distant galaxies.

    Dark Matter makes up around 85% of the universe. It is called dark matter because it does not interact with light, and is made up of unknown particles. It does, however, interact with known matter through gravity, binding galaxies together. Dark energy, on the other hand, is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Even less about dark energy is known than about dark matter.

    (Image courtesy ESA/C. Carreau)

  • NASA Telescope Finds Evidence of Solar Braiding

    NASA Telescope Finds Evidence of Solar Braiding

    NASA this week announced that it has found the first clear evidence of energy transfer from the sun’s magnetic field to its corona. Called “solar braiding,” the process was only a theory until these new observations.

    The evidence comes from the highest resolution images of the sun‘s corona ever taken. The photos were taken by NASA’s High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) telescope.

    “Scientists have tried for decades to understand how the sun’s dynamic atmosphere is heated to millions of degrees,” said Jonathan Cirtain, Hi-C principal investigator and a heliophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “Because of the level of solar activity, we were able to clearly focus on an active sunspot, and obtain some remarkable images. Seeing this for the first time is a major advance in understanding how our sun continuously generates the vast amount of energy needed to heat its atmosphere.”

    Cirtain and his colleagues assert that the new findings could lead to better predictions for space weather, since the sun’s magnetic field drives solar eruptions that can reach the Earth and potentially disrupt satellites.

    The Hi-C telescope is a sub-orbital satellite that flew for only 10 minutes in July 2012. During that time, it took 165 photos of an active region of the sun’s corona. New optics grinding and surface polishing techniques were developed for the Hi-C’s mirrors. The telescope’s resolution is around five times that of the one aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which already takes amazingly high-definition pictures of the sun.

    “The Hi-C observations are part of a technology demonstration that will enable a future generation of telescopes to solve the fundamental questions concerning the heating of the solar atmosphere and the origins of space weather, “said Jeffrey Newmark, sounding rocket program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

    (Image courtesy NASA)

  • Climate Change is Threatening the Amazon Rainforest, Says NASA

    Climate Change is Threatening the Amazon Rainforest, Says NASA

    A NASA-led study has shown that a part of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California is still suffering from a “megadrought” that began in 2005. Researchers cited this and damage due to drought recurrences in the Amazon during the past decade as evidence that the rainforest may face “large-scale degradation due to climate change.”

    The study looked at satellite microwave radar data from 2000 to 2009, measurements of rainfall from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, and moisture content from the rainforest canopy from the Seawinds scatterometer on NASA’s QuikScat satellite.

    During the summer of 2005, over 270,000 square miles of old-growth forest in the Amazon experienced “extensive, severe drought.” This megadrought caused changes in the forest canopy, including possible dieback of branches and tree falls. Though rainfall levels recovered in the years after the drought, much of the damage to the forest canopy remained until the next drought in 2010.

    “The biggest surprise for us was that the effects appeared to persist for years after the 2005 drought,” said Yadvinder Malhi, co-author of the study at the University of Oxford. “We had expected the forest canopy to bounce back after a year with a new flush of leaf growth, but the damage appeared to persist right up to the subsequent drought in 2010.”

    The study shows that around 30% of the Amazon basin’s total forest area was affected by the 2005 drought. Almost half of the entire Amazon rainforest was affected by the 2010 drought. The drought rate in the area has been abnormally high during the past decade. Research has shown that rainfall over the southern Amazon rainforest fell by nearly 3.2% from 1970 to 1998.

    Malhi and his colleagues attribute recent Amazonian droughts to long-term warming of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures.

    “In effect, the same climate phenomenon that helped form hurricanes Katrina and Rita along U.S. southern coasts in 2005 also likely caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia,” said Sassan Saatchi, leader on the research at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “An extreme climate event caused the drought, which subsequently damaged the Amazonian trees.

    “Our results suggest that if droughts continue at five- to 10-year intervals or increase in frequency due to climate change, large areas of the Amazon forest are likely to be exposed to persistent effects of droughts and corresponding slow forest recovery. This may alter the structure and function of Amazonian rainforest ecosystems.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Titan’s Craters Could be Filled With Hydrocarbon Sand, Says NASA

    Titan’s Craters Could be Filled With Hydrocarbon Sand, Says NASA

    New findings from NASA‘s Cassini probe have revealed that Saturn’s moon Titan may look younger than it really is. Dunes of hydrocarbon sand have been slowly filling up the craters that pockmark the moon.

    “Most of the Saturnian satellites – Titan’s siblings – have thousands and thousands of craters on their surface,” said Catherine Neish, a Cassini radar team associate based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “So far on Titan, of the 50 percent of the surface that we’ve seen in high resolution, we’ve only found about 60 craters. It’s possible that there are many more craters on Titan, but they are not visible from space because they are so eroded. We typically estimate the age of a planet’s surface by counting the number of craters on it (more craters means an older surface). But if processes like stream erosion or drifting sand dunes are filling them in, it’s possible that the surface is much older that it appears.”

    The new research is the first quantitative estimate of how much the weather on Titan has eroded its surface. The moon is the only one known in our solar system to have a thick atmosphere. It is also known to have seas of organic compounds, such as ethane and methane, on its surface.

    Methane is broken down in Titan’s atmosphere by sunlight, then recombined into more complex hydrocarbons. These molecules form an orange smog that envelops the planet. Some of the larger particles from the atmosphere, say scientists, rain down and become bound together into an exotic form of sand.

    “Since the sand appears to be produced from the atmospheric methane, Titan must have had methane in its atmosphere for at least several hundred million years in order to fill craters to the levels we are seeing,” said Neish.

    Titan’s methane levels are somewhat of a mystery, however. Researchers estimate that current levels of methane on Titan would be broken down within tens of millions of years. This suggests that the moon either had much more methane in the past, or is replenishing its methane in some way.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/GSFC)

  • Mona Lisa Beamed to the Moon by NASA

    Mona Lisa Beamed to the Moon by NASA

    This week NASA announced it has beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to a satellite orbiting the moon. The image treveled almost 240,000 miles from the Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) station at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter orbiting the moon.

    The transmission was a test of laser communication with the lunar satellite. The Mona Lisa was piggybacked on laser pulses that are normally sent LOLA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) to track its position. The successful transmission was verified by sending the image back to Earth using the LRO’s radio telemetry system.

    “This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances,” said David Smith, LOLA principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distant future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide.”

    Satellites around Earth are normally tracked using radio waves. The LRO is the only non-Earth satellite to be tracked by laser.

    “Because LRO is already set up to receive laser signals through the LOLA instrument, we had a unique opportunity to demonstrate one-way laser communication with a distant satellite,” said Xiaoli Sun, a LOLA scientist at Goddard.

    For the transmission, the Mona Lisa was split into an array of 152 x 200 pixels. The pixels were then converted into a shade of grey, then transmitted by laser pulse at a data rate of around 300 bits per second. The LRO’s LOLA instrument reconstructed the image based on the arrival times of the laser pulses from Earth. All of this was accomplished without interfering with the NGSLR’s tracking and the LOLA’s primary task: mapping the moon’s elevation and terrain.

  • NASA Looks For the Origin of Life at the Bottom of the Ocean

    NASA Looks For the Origin of Life at the Bottom of the Ocean

    NASA this week revealed that it is simulating the conditions believed to have created the organic molecules that may have been the precursors to life on Earth.

    An experiment at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is mimicking the conditions observed at hydrothermal vents in the deepest parts of the ocean. Glass tubes, thin barrels, and valves are sending carbon dioxide-rich ocean water and alkaline fluid through a sample of rock that simulates ancient volcanic ocean crust. The experiment runs at 100 times the pressure on the Earth’s surface and at around 90 degrees Celsius (200 degrees Fahrenheit) A detector system detects the compounds coming out of the set-up, keeping watch for organic compounds such as ethane and methane.

    “What we’re trying to do is to climb down and create the conditions for the very first steps to the beginning of life as we know it,” said Mike Russell, leader on the experiment and a senior geologist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Icy Worlds team at JPL. “That’s the hard part.”

    The Icy Worlds project is trying to learn more about potentially habitable environments like Mars, as well as liquid water environments on icy objects such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus, where signs of water ice have been found.

    The hydrothermal vent experiments are based on Russell’s 1989 theory that life on Earth may have begun at alkaline hydrothermal vents some 4 billion years ago. The carbon dioxide at these vents could have supplied the carbon needes to produce organic molecules. Evidence for this was found in 2000, when a vent showing signs of producing organic molecules was found in the Atlantic Ocean.

    “If this ocean experiment is successful, scientists would have a better handle on where to look for the building blocks of life on Earth and beyond, and what signatures we should be looking for of life and of habitable environments in the solar system,” said Isik Kanik, Icy Worlds Principal Investigator.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • 2012 the Ninth Warmest Year on Record, Says NASA

    2012 the Ninth Warmest Year on Record, Says NASA

    NASA announced this week that 2012 was the ninth warmest year since 1880, the earliest date to which global temperatures can be tracked. 2005 and 2010 rank as the hottest years on record, while all 10 of the warmest years have occurred since 1998.

    The news comes from an analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which monitors global surface temperatures. The average global temperature in 2012 was 14.6 degrees Celsius (58.3 degrees Fahrenheit), which is .6 degrees C (1.0 degrees F) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline average.

    The researchers emphasized that, though weather patterns cause fluctuations in average temperature from one year to the next, long-term trends show a warming planet.

    “One more year of numbers isn’t in itself significant,” said Gavin Schmidt, a GISS climatologist. “What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it’s warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

    Scientists have also shown that carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere have been rising for decades. In 1880 the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 285 parts per million. The levels now sit at over 390 parts per million.

    While the worldwide temperature was only the ninth hottest on record, the continental U.S. had its warmest year on record during 2012.

    “The U.S. temperatures in the summer of 2012 are an example of a new trend of outlying seasonal extremes that are warmer than the hottest seasonal temperatures of the mid-20th century,” said James E. Hansen, GISS director. “The climate dice are now loaded. Some seasons still will be cooler than the long-term average, but the perceptive person should notice that the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.”

    The visualization seen in the video below depicts the Earth’s yearly temperatures when compared to the baseline averages from 1951 to 1980.

    (Image courtesy NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

  • NASA Shows Off Its 4K Sun Images

    NASA Shows Off Its 4K Sun Images

    There’s a cost associated with being an early adopter, and it’s not just the higher prices. New media formats consistently outpace the rate at which content creators can adapt to the new formats. As a result, early adopters pay exorbitant sums for tech to display boring demo footage for months before ESPN finally updates its broadcast technology, which happens coincide with the release of the second, better generation of devices.

    With HDTV, customers were often left watching nature footage and landscapes. With the 4K TV revolution just starting, TV manufacturers are going to need some content that shows customers what they’re missing with their crappy 1080p displays. Luckily, NASA has a suggestion.

    Astronomers at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) for some time have been using an Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) to take ultra high-definition images twice as large as anything seen on the displays at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Every second.

    As of last month, the SDO had taken 100 million images. NASA bragged that if they were watched at 30 frame sper second there would be enough footage to watch eight hours a day for nearly four months. That’s a lot of staring at the sun.

    It’s unclear whether NASA is actually promising 4K content for showrooms or whether the agency just used the excuse of CES to show off its SDO photos. Either way, more SDO images and video, mostly of solar eruptions and flares, can be found on NASA’s SDO website.

    (Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/SDO)

  • Rogue Planet Orbit Spotted by NASA’s Hubble

    Rogue Planet Orbit Spotted by NASA’s Hubble

    New images of the Fomalhaut star system could show evidence of a “titanic planetary disruption.” Astronomers have found that the debris belt in the system is wider than was thought, and that a “rogue” planet has a precarious orbit that takes it straight through the dust ring. The debris belt spans a huge section of space from 14 to around 20 billion miles from Fomalhaut. The planet, Fomalhaut b, comes as close as 4.6 billion miles from its star before swinging out 27 billion miles away from it.

    “We are shocked. This is not what we expected,” said Paul Kalas of the University of California at Berkeley and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

    Kalas led a team that recalculated Fomalhaut b’s orbit from newer observations made last year using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. He and his colleagues say these new findings suggest that there could be other objects in the system that sent the planet on its wild trajectory. Hypotheses include an undiscovered planet that gravitationally ejected Fomalhaut b, or a dwarf planet that collided with it.

    “Hot Jupiters get tossed through scattering events, where one planet goes in and one gets thrown out,” said Mark Clampin of NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This could be the planet that gets thrown out.”

    If Fomalhaut b is in the same plane as the dust belt, it will enter the debris around 2032. Astronomers have also detected irregularities and gaps across the dust belt, suggesting that there are other planets to search for in the Fomalhaut system.