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Tag: NASA

  • NASA Brushes Off Its Apollo Dust Data

    NASA Brushes Off Its Apollo Dust Data

    It’s been 40 years since the last Apollo mission, and this week NASA announced that findings from those missions continue to provide researchers with new insights into the the moon. Scientists at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), NASA’s archive for space science mission data, are currently restoring data from Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 dust detectors.

    “This is the first look at the fully calibrated, digital dust data from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions,” said David Williams, an NSSDC data specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

    The digital data from the two missions’ dust detectors has not been archived before, and NASA estimates that a year and a half of the data have never been studied. The new data can be used in a long-term analysis of the dust readings. The restoration of the data is part of the Lunar Data Project, a n effort to provide Apollo scientific data in modern formats.

    The data was restored in a tedious manner, with an undergrad from the Florida Institute of Technology named Marie McBride going through data sets and separating raw detector counts from temperatures and other information. An incomplete second set of data then indicated how raw counts could be converted to usable measurements. The second data set had to be converted from microfilm, then synched up to the first set.

    Though the state of the data may suggest it, scientists haven’t abandoned their studies of lunar dust completely. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, has taken lunar dust measurements. Next year’s launch of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) will begin a new phase in studying the moon’s dust.

    “Just last week, LRO did some important measurements seeking dust profiles in the lunar atmosphere,” said Rich Vondrak, the LRO deputy project scientist at Goddard.

  • NASA Finds Mysterious Gullies on Asteroid Vesta’s Surface

    NASA’s Dawn mission has returned images from the giant asteroid Vesta that scientists say include long, narrow gullies along the walls of relatively young craters.

    The discovery has revealed a mystery that scientists are now trying to solve. The images from Dawn show two different types of gullies. Some are straight chutes, while others wind about and end in what NASA is calling “lobe-shaped” deposits.

    “The straight gullies we see on Vesta are textbook examples of flows of dry material, like sand, that we’ve seen on Earth’s moon and we expected to see on Vesta,” said Jennifer Scully, a Dawn team member at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But these sinuous gullies are an exciting, unexpected find that we are still trying to understand.”

    The “sinuous” gullies are longer, narrower, and curvier than the others. The also begin from V-shaped, collapsed regions researchers have described as “alcoves.” The current hypothesis is that two different processes formed the different gullies.

    “On Earth, similar features – seen at places like Meteor Crater in Arizona – are carved by liquid water,” said Christopher Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator at UCLA. “On Mars, there is still a debate about what has caused them. We need to analyze the Vesta gullies very carefully before definitively specifying their source.”

    Researchers are looking to Earth and Mars for clues about Vesta’s gullies, but mystery still remains. Scientists have been debating the explanation for Mars’ gullies for years. Some possible causes include liquid water and carbon-dioxide frost that causes fresh flows of Martian sand.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

  • Enormous Galaxy Cluster Spotted by NASA’s WISE

    Galaxy clusters, the rarest of galaxy groupings, can be difficult for astronomers to find. NASA‘s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope, however, has just found a gigantic galaxy cluster, and is expected to uncover thousands more. The new findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

    “One of the key questions in cosmology is how did the first bumps and wiggles in the distribution of matter in our universe rapidly evolve into the massive structures of galaxies we see today,” said Anthony Gonzalez, leader of the research program at the University of Florida. “By uncovering the most massive of galaxy clusters billions of light-years away with WISE, we can test theories of the universe’s early inflation period.”

    WISE has completed two all-sky surveys at infrared wavelengths, looking for near-Earth asteroids for a project dubbed NEOWISE. Now, the WISE team is combining all of its data and making it publicly available late next year for a project called AIIWISE. Using the AIIWISE data, astronomers should be able to spot large galaxy clusters, as well as hidden cool stars nearby

    The first galaxy cluster found is called MOO J2342.0+1301 and located over 7 billion light-years from Earth. It is hundreds of times the mass of our Milky Way galaxy. Galaxy clusters are difficult to spot because their distance means not many we can observe have had sufficient time to form since the big bang.

    “I had pretty much written off using WISE to find distant galaxy clusters because we had to reduce the telescope diameter to only 16 inches [40 centimeters] to stay within our cost guidelines, so I am thrilled that we can find them after all,” said Peter Eisenhardt, co-author of the paper on the findings and a WISE project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The longer exposures from AllWISE open the door wide to see the most massive structures forming in the distant universe.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/WIYN/Subaru)

  • Van Allen Probes Probe Earth’s Radiation Belts

    NASA this week revealed that the early findings from its Van Allen Probes, which are uncovering the mysteries of Earth’s radiation belts, are already helping researcher’s determine just how much influence the sun has over Earth’s magnetosphere. The probes, launched back in August, are orbiting in areas populated by high-energy and hazardous particles created by the magnetosphere.

    “The sun has been a driver of these systems more than we had any right to expect,” said Daniel Baker, Principal Investigator for the Van Allen Probes Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT) at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado. “We’re seeing brand new features we hadn’t expected. We expected to see a fairly placid radiation belt system. Instead, we see that the belts have been extraordinarily active and dynamic during the first few weeks. We’re looking in the right places at the right times.”

    Events from the sun, such as solar eruptions and plasma ejections have caused “dramatic” changes in the radiation belts. The Van Allen Probes have measured these changes using identical sets of five instrument suites. Measurements using the Electric Fields and Waves Suite (EFW) and the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) are helping researchers understand how fields and waves of electricity and magnetism affect charged particles within the belts.

    “The electric field and magnetic field measurements on the Van Allen Probes are the best ever made in the radiation belts,” said Craig Kletzing, principal investigator for EMFISIS at the University of Iowa. “For the first time, we’ve been able to see how long intense low frequency electric fields and waves at the edge of the radiation belts can last – sometimes for over five hours during geomagnetic storms. Before, it was like we could see a car zoom past, but not see anything about the details. Now, we can see what color the upholstery is.”

    NASA also revealed that the Van Allen Probes have been taking a beating in orbit. The inner radiation belt where they orbit is also where the most hazardous and energized particles orbit. The probes were built to be tough, and are discovering that the density of these particles varies at different altitudes, using their Relativistic Proton Spectrometer (RPS) instruments.

    (Image courtesy JHU/APL)

  • NASA Experiments With Nano-Sized Sensors

    NASA Experiments With Nano-Sized Sensors

    NASA is now working with a special material to develop nano-scale sensors that can detect trace elements in Earth’s upper atmosphere and find structural flaws in spacecraft.

    The material, called graphene, is just one atom thick and is composed of carbon atoms. It is 200 times as strong as steel, and is stable at extreme temperatures.

    “The cool thing about graphene is its properties,” said Jeff Stewart, the acting assistant chief for technology in the Mechanical Systems Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It offers a plethora of possibilities. Frankly, we’re just getting started.”

    Stewart and his colleagues have developed a process to manufacture relatively large, high-quality samples of graphene. Using the material, the researchers are developing a miniature, low-mass, low-power detector that can measure the amount of atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphere. Graphene oxidizes when it absorbs atomic oxygen, creating a change in electrical resistance that can be measured. Such a device will be able to reveal the density of atomic oxygen at such heights, revealing its role in creating atmospheric drag.

    “We still don’t know the impact of atomic elements on spacecraft in creating a drag force,” said Fred Herrero, a retired Goddard researcher still working in an emeritus capacity. “We don’t know how much momentum is transferred between the atom and the spacecraft. This is important because engineers need to understand the impact to estimate the lifetime of a spacecraft and how long it will take before the spacecraft reenters Earth’s atmosphere.”

    NASA researchers now plan to fabricate and test the first generation of graphene-based chemical sensors by the end of the fiscal year.

    (Image courtesy NASA/Pat Izzo)

  • Moon is Battered, Reveals New Gravity Map

    A new gravity map of Earth’s moon shows a record of billions of years of impacts on its surface. The new map, generated by NASA‘s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, is now the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. It will allow scientists to learn about the internal structure of the moon, its tectonic structures, volcanic landforms, basin rings, crater central peaks, and craters.

    “What this map tells us is that more than any other celestial body we know of, the moon wears its gravity field on its sleeve,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL Principal Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “When we see a notable change in the gravity field, we can sync up this change with surface topography features such as craters, rilles or mountains.”

    The gravity map was created from data taken by two washing machine-sized spacecraft (GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, or “Ebb” and “Flow”) orbiting the moon. The probes transmit radio signals to each other to precisely measure the distance between them while orbiting the moon. As they pass over areas of greater or lesser gravity on the moon, the distance between them shifts slightly.

    The probes also revealed that the bulk density of the moon’s highland crust is “substantially” lower than predicted. The density is, however, consistent with data from the Apollo missions in the 70s. This suggests that samples of the moon brought back by astronauts are a good representation of processes on the moon. The bulk composition of the moon is also similar to that of Earth, providing evidence for models that show the moon was formed from a giant impact with Earth in the early solar system.

    “We used gradients of the gravity field in order to highlight smaller and narrower structures than could be seen in previous datasets,” said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL scientist at the Colorado School of Mines. “This data revealed a population of long, linear gravity anomalies, with lengths of hundreds of kilometers, crisscrossing the surface. These linear gravity anomalies indicate the presence of dikes, or long, thin, vertical bodies of solidified magma in the subsurface. The dikes are among the oldest features on the moon, and understanding them will tell us about its early history.”

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

  • U.S. Government Says the World Won’t End Dec 21, Which Means the World Is Definitely Ending Dec 21

    The world didn’t end on May 21st. The world once again failed to stop existing on October 21st. The world is also not going to end on December 21st.

    But don’t bother telling that to your weird cousin in his doomsday shelter, he won’t believe you anyway.

    Especially after you tell him that the latest reassurance is coming from the mouth of the gasp U.S. Government!?

    Yes, the government of the United States or at least someone with access to their USA.gov web portal has dedicated an entire blog post to making sure you know that we’re all going to be here to drink a little too much on Christmas Eve.

    “False rumors about the end of the world in 2012 have been commonplace on the Internet for some time. Many of these rumors involve the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 (it won’t), a comet causing catastrophic effects (definitely not), a hidden planet sneaking up and colliding with us (no and no), and many others,” they say.

    “The world will not end on December 21, 2012, or any day in 2012.”

    IN 2012? What do you know, USAgov?

    The U.S. government is relying on NASA’s previous debunking for their proof that the world will keep turning in a little over two weeks time. NASA says that “the world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.”

    If you want to watch a bunch of NASA scientists tear apart each bogus doomsday prophecy one by one, check out this recent Google Hangout:

  • New Mars Rover Set to Launch in 2020

    NASA this week announced that it has plans to send a new robotic science rover to Mars in 2020. The news comes just after the agency revealed the results of a full analysis of Martian soil by Mars rover Curiosity.

    “The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration program,” said Charles Bolden, NASA administrator. “With this next mission, we’re ensuring America remains the world leader in the exploration of the Red Planet, while taking another significant step toward sending humans there in the 2030s.”

    In addition to a new rover, NASA has plans for the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; the two NASA spacecraft and one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; next year’s launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) mission; and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, which also include a rover.

    The plan for another Mars rover is another step toward President Obama’s challenge to send humans to Mars by the 2030s. The new rover will be designed based on the success of NASA’s latest rover, Curiosity. The goal is to keep costs and risks low by using proven landing systems and capabilities that have already been demonstrated. Mission objectives, payload, and science instruments for the 2020 rover will be ironed out by the Science Mission Directorate.

    “The challenge to restructure the Mars Exploration Program has turned from the seven minutes of terror for the Curiosity landing to the start of seven years of innovation,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “This mission concept fits within the current and projected Mars exploration budget, builds on the exciting discoveries of Curiosity, and takes advantage of a favorable launch opportunity.”

    (Image courtesy NASA)

  • NASA Debunks Doomsday, Apocalypse Prophecies

    As December 21, 2012 grows near, the hysteria concerning the end of the Maya calendar is coming to a head. Gullible people all over the world are stocking up on non-perishable items and preparing for an apocalyptic disaster. For scientists, though, these latest doomsday prophecies are the same thing as any prophecy – a claim without enough evidence to even be worthy of the label ‘hypothesis.’

    Not everyone knows bunk when they hear it, though, so NASA recently devoted the precious time of some of its scientists to debunking the spurious claims. NASA researchers from all over the U.S. gathered in a Google Hangout to discuss prophecy, the winter solstice, and the track record of doomsday prophecies (spoiler alert: they’ve all been wrong).

    Among the participants are Astrobiologist David Morrison, Asteroid Scientist Don Yeomans, Archaeoastronomer Mitzi Adams, Heliophysicist Lika Guhathakurta, and Astrophysicist Paul Hertz. The scientists methodically pick apart every silly prophecy and rumor about what disasters will happen on December 21. In particular, the group tears into the myth of the fictional planet Nibiru, which is rumored to be on a collision course with Earth.

    (Image courtesy MBisanz via Wikimedia Commons)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Has Fully Analyzed Martian Soil

    Mars Rover Curiosity has now used each of its on-board instruments to analyze Martian soil. Though researchers have found a complex chemistry in the soil on Mars, they haven’t found what would be considered a major discovery: carbon-based organic compounds that could represent the ingredients for life.

    Water, sulfur, and chlorine-containing substances have been found in samples analyzed using Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments. The samples were taken from five different scoops curiosity made into a drift of windblown dust and sand NASA named “Rocknest.” The rover was stationed at the Rocknest site for weeks while its instruments were prepared and utilized.

    Rumors of a big discovery were played down by NASA in advance of today’s announcement. Speculation held that organic compounds may have been found in the red planet’s soil, as a goal of the rover project is finding evidence of whether Mars could have once supported life.

    “We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater,” said Paul Mahaffy, SAM Principal Investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

    Regardless, the SAM instrument identified perchlorate, an oxygen and chlorine compound. It reacted with other chemicals heated in the SAM to form chlorinated methane compounds – one-carbon organic compounds that were detected by the SAM. Though the chlorine is from Mars, the carbon could have been carried by Curiosity from Earth.

    A variety of Martian minerals will be tested as the rover drives toward its current destination in the Gleneg area at the base of Mount Sharp. The Rocknest soil was chosen for Curiosity’s first scooping exercises because of its fine sand particles, which were well-suited for scrubbing the interior surfaces of the rover’s sample-handling chambers.

    “We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift,” said John Grotzinger, Curiosity Project Scientist at the California Institute of Technology. “The synergies of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the mission’s main science destination on Mount Sharp.”

  • Voyager Discovers New Region at the Edge of the Solar System

    Excited NASA researchers today announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a new, unexpected region on its way out of the solar system. The scientists believe that the region is the final hurdle before Voyager enters interstellar space.

    The new region of the heliosphere – the bubble of charged particles from the sun that envelops the solar system – is being referred to as a magnetic “highway” where lower-energy particles from inside the solar system can pass out and higher-energy particles from interstellar space can stream in. Before reaching this region, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 observed that charged particles bounced in all directions, as if trapped inside the heliosphere.

    “Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun’s environment, we now can taste what it’s like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway,” said Edward Stone, a Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology. “We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it’s likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn’t what we expected, but we’ve come to expect the unexpected from Voyager.”

    The Voyager team believes Voyager 1 is still inside the heliosphere because the direction of the magnetic fields surrounding it has not changed. The direction of magnetic field lines is expected to change as the probe enters interstellar space.

    Excitement at the Voyager probes’ approach of deep space has been increasing since 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock into the heliosheath, the outermost layer of the heliosphere.

    The probe crossed into the new, unexpected magnetic highway back in July of this year. At the time, researchers thought Voyager may have been approaching interstellar space, but the region ebbed and flowed toward the probe several times. Since August 25, the region has been stable.

    “If we were judging by the charged particle data alone, I would have thought we were outside the heliosphere,” said Stamatios Krimigis, principal investigator of Voyager’s low-energy charged particle instrument and a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “But we need to look at what all the instruments are telling us and only time will tell whether our interpretations about this frontier are correct.”

    Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977. The probes are the longest-serving NASA spacecrafts and Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object from Earth. Voyager 1 is 122 Astronomical Units (11 billion miles) from the sun, and Voyager 2 is 100 Astronomical Units (9 billion miles) from the sun. Researchers do not believe Voyager 2 has yet reached the newly discovered magnetic highway.

    “We are in a magnetic region unlike any we’ve been in before – about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock – but the magnetic field data show no indication we’re in interstellar space,” said Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “The magnetic field data turned out to be the key to pinpointing when we crossed the termination shock. And we expect these data will tell us when we first reach interstellar space.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Hubble Photo Shows Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy

    The above photo is an image of the irregular galaxy NGC 5253, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope‘s Advanced Camera for Surveys. It combines both visible and infrared exposures. A larger version of the image can be viewed here.

    The galaxy is the closest known Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy (BCD), at a distance of around 12 million light-years from Earth. It sits in the constellation of Centaurus.

    BCD galaxies, according to NASA, have low dust content and lack an abundance of many elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. They do, however, have many star-forming regions due to molecular clouds that are similar to clouds in the early universe that formed the first stars. Astronomers consider galaxies such as NGC 5253 good places to study ancient star-forming processes.

    The center of the galaxy contains a star-forming region (“starburst”) where large, hot, young stars form and die rapidly. The stars glow blue in the image and traces of the starburst , produced by ionized oxygen gas, can also be seen. The central region is surrounded by an elliptical main body, which appears red in the image.

    According to NASA, the most current hypothesis on galaxy formation, the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, predicts more satellite dwarf galaxies should be seen orbiting large galaxies such as our own that is currently observed. As such, this “Dwarf Galaxy Problem” makes BCD galaxies such as NGC 5253 an interesting anomaly.

    (Image courtesy ESA/Hubble & NASA)

  • Ancient Microbes Found Under Antarctic Lake

    A team of researchers has uncovered a community of bacteria living in one of the most inhospitable place on Earth: the dark, cold, salty environment under a remote lake in Antarctica. The discovery will help teach scientists how life can be sustained in extreme environments, including places beyond our planet.

    Lake Vida, where the discovery took place, lies under nearly 65 feet of ice. It contains no oxygen and possesses the highest concentration of nitrous oxide levels of any natural body of water on Earth. The water is around six times as salty as seawater and has an average temperature of -8 degrees Fahrenheit.

    “This study provides a window into one of the most unique ecosystems on Earth,” said Alison Murray, a molecular microbial ecologist and polar researcher at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and lead author of a report on the findings published the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. “Our knowledge of geochemical and microbial processes in lightless icy environments, especially at subzero temperatures, has been mostly unknown up until now. This work expands our understanding of the types of life that can survive in these isolated, cryoecosystems and how different strategies may be used to exist in such challenging environments.”

    Though previous studies indicate that Lake Vida has been isolated from any outside influences for over 3,000 years, the researchers stated that the habitat is home to a surprisingly diverse and abundant variety of bacteria. The microbes survive without a current source of sunlight.

    “This system is probably the best analog we have for possible ecosystems in the subsurface waters of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa,” said Chris McKay, a co-author of the report and senior scientist at NASA‘s Ames Research Center.

    A geochemical analysis of samples from the lake suggest chemical reactions between the briny water and iron-rich sediments produce nitrous oxide and hydrogen, which may provide energy to the microbes.

  • Study Shows Ice Loss at Both Poles Increasing

    A new study by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) is showing that the melting rate for ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica has increased over the past two decades. All together, the ice sheets are losing over three times as much ice as they were in the 90s.

    The study, published today in the journal Science, combined data from satellites and aircraft, producing the most comprehensive assessment of ice sheet loss to date. The inclusion of satellite data makes the new study more than twice as accurate as the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) estimates of ice sheet loss, which were broad enough to actually encompass the possibility that antarctica was growing. Researchers estimate that the ice sheets have contributed 0.44 inces to global sea levels since 1992 – one-fifth of the total seal level rise over that period.

    “What is unique about this effort is that it brought together the key scientists and all of the different methods to estimate ice loss,” said Tom Wagner, NASA’s cryosphere program manager. “It’s a major challenge they undertook, involving cutting-edge, difficult research to produce the most rigorous and detailed estimates of ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica to date. The results of this study will be invaluable in informing the IPCC as it completes the writing of its Fifth Assessment Report over the next year.”

    The study found that ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland were varied. Around two-thirds of the ice sheet loss came from Greenland.

    “Both ice sheets appear to be losing more ice now than 20 years ago, but the pace of ice loss from Greenland is extraordinary, with nearly a five-fold increase since the mid-1990s,” said Erik Ivins, a research scientist who co-coordinated the study from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “In contrast, the overall loss of ice in Antarctica has remained fairly constant, with the data suggesting a 50-percent increase in Antarctic ice loss during the last decade.”

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    (Image courtesy Ian Joughin, University of Washington)

  • Water Ice on Mercury Confirmed by NASA’s MESSENGER

    The hypothesis that Mercury has abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its shadowed polar craters appears to have been confirmed.

    NASA announced today that new measurements from its Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft provide “compelling support” for the water ice theory. The space craft measured the excess hydrogen at Mercury’s north pole, the reflectance of Mercury’s polar deposits, and provided detailed models of the surface temperatures, as well as surface temperatures in the planet’s north polar regions. The data has been published today in the journal Science, through the ScienceXpress online pre-publication service.

    “For more than 20 years, the jury has been deliberating whether the planet closest to the sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions,” said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator and director of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “MESSENGER now has supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict.”

    The image above highlights the shadowed areas of Mercury’s north polar region taken by MESSENGER (in red) and Earth-based radar (in yellow).

    “The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury’s polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick,” said David Lawrence, lead author of one of three papers and a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). “We estimate from our neutron measurements the water ice lies beneath a layer that has much less hydrogen. The surface layer is between 10 and 20 centimeters [4-8 inches] thick,”

    Though Mercury’s (short) distance from the sun make it seem an unlikely place to find ice, the planet’s rotational axis tilts less than one degree. This means there are pockets of the planet’s surface that are never hit by sunlight. The idea that these pockets might hold ice is decades old, and the hypothesis came to prominence in 1991 when the Arecibo radio telescope detected radar-bright patches at Mercury’s poles.

    (Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory)

  • NASA and Google Evangelist Use Interplanetary Internet to Test Robot

    NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have successfully controlled an educational rover from the International Space Station (ISS) using the “interplanetary internet.” In late October, ISS Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams used a laptop on the space station to remotely drive a LEGO robot (not the one pictured above) at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany.

    The experiment used NASA’s Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol, which is based on the delay-tolerant networking architecture developed in part by Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist. In the newest experiment, DTN was used to simulate an astronaut in an planet-orbiting vehicle controlling a robotic rover on a planet’s surface.

    “The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot,” said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation at NASA Headquarters . “The experimental DTN we’ve tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations.”

    DTN enables standardized communications similar to the internet, but over interplanetary distances and through the time delays in communication with spacecrafts orbiting other planets or soaring out in deep space. The protocol accounts for disconnections and errors, and data moves through the network by hopping. Bundles of data are temporarily stored in nodes, and then forwarded to the next node when a link becomes available.

    (via co.Design)

  • Hurricane Strength Forecasts Improved by NASA Study

    A new NASA study shows that hurricane forecasters may soon be able to better predict hurricane and tropical storm strength by analyzing their relative-humidity levels.

    The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, looked at relative humidity data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft. Data from close to 200 North Atlantic hurricanes between 2002 and 2010 were analyzed and compared to all the other data available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.

    Researchers found that hurricanes that rapidly intensified also tended to have higher relative-humidity levels than storms that weakened or stayed the same. In other words, rapidly intensifying hurricanes tend to have a more moist large-scale environment.

    “Our results show relative humidity and its variations within a hurricane’s large-scale environment may be useful predictors in improving intensity forecast models,” said Longtao Wu, lead author of the study and a reasearcher at the University of California Los Angeles-Jet Propulsion Labratory Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering. “This is the first satellite analysis to quantify this small but statistically significant correlation.”

    Since the early 90s, forecasts of hurricane paths have gotten progressively better. Forecasts of hurricane strength, however, have not improved nearly as much. This is due to the fact that hurricane intensity is sensitive to a variety of factors within the storm and its environment. In general, relative humidity decreases the further from the storm’s center it is measured.

    “We speculate that decreasing relative humidity levels farther from a storm’s center may be an important factor in a cyclone’s rapid intensification,” said Hui Su, study co-author. “A drier environment farther from a storm’s center limits the development of its outer rain bands and favors the growth of its inner core. Conversely, a wet environment farther from a storm’s center can weaken a cyclone by making it easier for rain bands to form outside the storm’s core, which compete with the inner core’s growth.”

    (Image courtesy NASA GSFC/LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team)

  • Huge Saturn Storm Photographed by Cassini

    Huge Saturn Storm Photographed by Cassini

    NASA today released photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn and its moons. The images reveal a “swirling vortex” that covers part of Saturn’s north polar hexagon. NASA stated that Cassini has been traversing Saturn’s system in tilted orbits, which gave mission scientists these amazing views of the planet’s polar region.

    Saturn's north pole

    The images were taken on Tuesday, when Cassini was just 250,000 miles from Saturn. The large storm is similar to one Cassini has photographed at the planet’s south pole in the past. Back in 2008, Cassini detected storms at Saturn’s north pole, but only at infrared wavelengths. Now that the seasons on the ringed planet have changed, the northern polar region is no longer in darkness and the massive storm can be photographed in visible light.

    Saturn's south pole storm

    Cassini observed a similar seasonal shift on Titan recently. As the southern winter on Titan has begun, sinking air at the south pole has prompted an abrupt shift in the circulation of the moon’s atmosphere and a vortex has formed over the south pole.

    Cassini has been observing Saturn and its most interesting moons since 2004, and recently celebrated the 15th anniversary since its launch. The probe is currently on its third and final mission. In September 2017, it is scheduled to enter Saturn’s atmosphere, where it will be “crushed and vaporized” by the planet’s atmosphere.

    (Images courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

  • Cute “Dumb Ways to Die” Parody Promotes NASA with “Cool Things to Find”

    A couple of weeks ago, a quirky little ad campaign for train safety went viral, generating nearly 30 million pageviews to date. Produced for Melbourne, Australia’s Metro Trains, “Dumb Ways to Die” featured cute little creatures finding unique ways to kill themselves. Now, a new video inspired by that one uses similar animation and a similar song to help promote NASA.

    This time, it’s a cute little Mars rover and it’s talking about “Cool Thing to Find.”

    “Why did we make this video? Well, first off, we here at Cinesaurus really love Dumb Ways to Die. Second, we are huge fans of NASA and everything they are doing here on Earth, in Space and on Mars. We like to do anything we can to help support NASA and think you should too! Write to your Senator, call them, make sure they don’t cut any more of their budget.”

    Once again, be prepared to have this tune stuck in your head all day:

    [Cinesaurus via Mashable]

  • Titan’s Atmosphere Shifts Abruptly, South Pole Vortex Forms

    New data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows that a shift in seasonal sunlight has resulted in an abrupt, wholesale reversal in the circulation of the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. According to researchers, the data shows “definitive” evidence for sinking air at the moon’s south pole where previously the air was upwelling. A paper on the data published today in the journal Nature states that the “key” to air circulation in Titan’s atmosphere is the moon’s tilt in relation to the sun.

    “Cassini’s up-close observations are likely the only ones we’ll have in our lifetime of a transition like this in action,” said Nick Teanby, the study’s lead author and a Cassini team associated at the University of Bristol. “It’s extremely exciting to see such rapid changes on a body that usually changes so slowly and has a ‘year’ that is the equivalent of nearly 30 Earth years.”

    Titan is interesting to researchers because is is one of only a few objects in our solar system, along with Earth, Venus, and Mars, that has both a solid surface and substantial atmosphere. Models of Titan’s atmosphere have predicted atmosphere circulation changes for almost 20 years, but the Titan pole that is currently undergoing winter is normally pointed away from Earth. Cassini is finally observing the circulation changes directly.

    “Understanding Titan’s atmosphere gives us clues for understanding our own complex atmosphere,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Some of the complexity in both places arises from the interplay of atmospheric circulation and chemistry.”

    NASA also stated that Cassini has detected complex chemical production in Titan’s atmosphere at up to 600 kilometers (400 miles) above the moon’s surface. This means that atmospheric circulation extends to about 100 kilometers (60 miles) higher than scientists expected. The compression of that air as it sank lower created a “hot spot” high above Titan’s south pole. That suggested that changes would be coming to the moon’s atmosphere, and that a layer of haze first detected by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft may not be as “detached” as was previously thought. The haze, instead, may be where small haze particles combine into larger aggregates that drop in Titan’s atmosphere and give the moon it’s orange color.

    “Next, we would expect to see the vortex over the south pole build up,” said Mike Flasar, Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “As that happens, one question is whether the south winter pole will be the identical twin of the north winter pole, or will it have a distinct personality? The most important thing is to be able to keep watching as these changes happen.”

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • William Shatner, Wil Wheaton Tout NASA Accomplishments

    Though the budget for NASA has been declining since the early 90s, the discoveries and technological advances coming out of the agency continue to stimulate the economy and improve the lives of all Americans. This makes NASA arguably the best investment the U.S. government makes, and the agency has recruited some sci-fi legends to make the case for space exploration.

    William Shatner, Wil Wheaton, and June Lockhart have each starred in a new public service announcement touting a few of NASA’s accomplishments that have changed life on Earth for the better.

    Shatner, best-known as Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise on the TV show Star Trek, discusses the medical advances that have come from NASA research, including remote ultrasounds, robot-assisted surgery, and thermometer pills.

    Wheaton is well-known as Wesley Crusher (the boy) on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. His PSA focuses on life-saving technologies developed by NASA that have improved safety in a variety of industries. Examples include rocket-powered parachutes, life rafts, and personal locator GPS beacons.

    Lockhart, known for, among other things, her role as Maureen Robinson on the TV show Lost in Space, chimes in with her PSA on the NASA-developed clean water technology that is used around the world.