The von Karman Lecture Series will be webcast on Thursday, April 19, at 7:00 pm PDT. The lecture features Dr. Michelle Thaller who will speak on "Infrared Astronomy: More Than the Eyes Can See." Michelle is an astronomer with the SIRTF mission. You'll find her very enthusiastic and entertaining. More details at the following URL:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lecture/upcoming.html March 28,01
FRIENDS OF THE OBSERVATORY Presents CAMPAIGN TO THE RED PLANET: NASA'S MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM By Dr. John L. Callas Science Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project at JPL Monday, April 2, 2001, 7:30 p.m. At GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY
NASA continues a very vigorous Mars Exploration Program. The Program, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA, has achieved great success with Mars Pathfinder and the ongoing Mars Global Surveyor, but the program is also punctuated by the failure of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander. Undaunted, NASA and JPL continue the exploration campaign with the launch of Mars Odyssey in April of this year, and the ambitious launch of twin, advanced rovers to the surface of Mars in 2003. Dr. John Callas, Science Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will speak on the great discoveries of this exploration program and the exciting opportunities of the future missions.
Dr. Callas received his Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Tufts University in 1981 and his Masters and Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1983 and 1987, respectively. After completing his doctorate, he joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to work on advanced spacecraft propulsion, which included such futuristic concepts as electric, nuclear and antimatter propulsion. Since 1989 he has worked as a Research Scientist at JPL on six Mars Missions. Most recently, Dr. Callas was appointed as the Science Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, a project to send twin rovers to the surface of Mars in 2003. In addition to his work on Mars Exploration, Dr. Callas is involved in the development of instrumentation for astrophysics and planetary science, and teaches mathematics at Pasadena City College as an adjunct faculty member. In his spare time, he mentors high school students interested in science and works with inner city elementary schools on science projects.
Friends Of The Observatory (FOTO) is the non-profit support group for Griffith Observatory. Currently, one of FOTO's primary goals is to support the renovation and expansion of the Observatory, so that it continues to provide the nearly 2 million visitors and 50,000 school children annually with accurate astronomical and scientific information and programs and remains the internationally recognizable icon of Los Angeles.
Admission: $2 for FOTO members, $5 for non-members, tickets available at the door. For more information contact FOTO at (818) 846-3686 or fotofriend@earthlink.net, or Griffith Observatory at (323) 664-1181. Please allow adequate time for parking. Children under 5 are not admitted.
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A very pretty planetary grouping and one that should not be missed happens on Thursday evening, March 29th. That evening the moon joins Jupiter and Saturn and the star Aldebaran and four bright objects will be clustered in the western sky for the few hours after sunset. The crescent moon is the brightest, of course. Second brightest is Jupiter which is a short distance (3 degrees) to the right of the moon. The star Aldebaran is a similar distance to the left of the moon, and Saturn is 10 degrees below Jupiter. Enjoy!
March 1, 2001 EVIDENCE SEEN FOR WET PAST ON GANYMEDE, JUPITER'S LARGEST MOON Bright, flat terrain in long swaths on the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede may testify that water or slush emerged there about a billion years ago, say planetary scientists who have combined stereo images from NASA's Galileo and Voyager missions to examine provocative features on that moon. This bright terrain, long since frozen over, lies uniformly in troughs about one kilometer (a little over a half mile) lower than Ganymede's older, darker, cratered terrain. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and larger than the planet Mercury. The roles that volcanism and various forms of tectonics have played in molding its complex topography have been hotly debated over the years. But the newly created images, taking advantage of the large quantity of Voyager images and the higher resolution of Galileo's, point to volcanism as the main impetus behind the troughs. "What we think we're seeing is evidence of an eruption of water on the surface of Ganymede," said Dr. William B. McKinnon, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the study published in Nature on March 1, 2001. "We see these long, smooth troughs that step down up to a full kilometer. They're really very much like rift valleys on the Earth and they're repaved with something pretty smooth. The material in the troughs is more like terrestrial lava in terms of its fluidity than relatively stiff glacial ice." He said the material is banked up against the edges of the walls of the trough and appears to have been more fluid than solid ice would have been, even if it were relatively warm ice. These features support the idea that they were created by volcanism. The report's other authors are Dr. Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas; Dr. David Gwynn of the University of California, Los Angeles; and Dr. Jeffrey Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, Calif. Images from the report are available online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jovianmoons . The researchers used stereo imaging -- a method where three-dimensional objects are reproduced by combining two or more images of the same subject taken from slightly different angles -- to reconstruct the physical topography of Ganymede's terrains. Maps were then generated from the stereo images. "This is a new kind of stereo topographical information over hundreds of kilometers across Ganymede," McKinnon said. The images provide new clues about what happened on Ganymede long ago and how that moon reworks its older, darker material. One trough extends an estimated 900 kilometers (about 600 miles), the approximate distance between St. Louis and New Orleans. "The long trough is probably a billion years old, but it's actually one of the younger volcanic features," McKinnon said. "It's the last gasp of the process that made the bright terrain." According to McKinnon, the geological explanation for such long lanes of flatness is that they occurred by the extending and opening up of Ganymede's crust. And then that portion of the crust became flooded with some sort of lava. The high-resolution Galileo images show that material that flooded the lanes is "no less liquid than a slush," said McKinnon. "But it is not glacial ice, which would have big moraines and big round edges like a flowing glacier does." Moreover, the images reveal depressions that resemble volcanic calderas along the edges of the bright terrains. On Earth, calderas are large, more-or-less circular craters usually caused by the collapse of underground lava reservoirs. "The caldera-like features make a pretty good circumstantial case for volcanism causing this topography," McKinnon said.
"We think these particularly bright terrains were formed by volcanism, which means that most or all the other bright terrains started out this way, and became fractured or grooved over time through tectonic forces." Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995. Its 12 scientific experiments have enhanced researchers' understanding of Jupiter's atmosphere, large moons and vast magnetic field. It carried the first atmospheric probe to enter Jupiter's atmosphere. In other firsts, it was the first mission to discover a satellite of an asteroid (Ida's satellite Dactyl), the first to go into orbit around Jupiter, the first to make a close flyby of an asteroid (Gaspra), and the first to provide direct observations of a comet hitting a planet (Shoemaker-Levy 9). Galileo has also provided extensive information about active volcanism on the moon Io and the possibility of a subsurface ocean on the moon Europa. Later this year, it will make close approaches to the moons Callisto and Io. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft each passed near Jupiter in 1979 and then explored more distant parts of the solar system. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Galileo and Voyager missions for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Febuary 28, 2001
Highlights of 2002 Funding
* Provides $14.5 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a two-percent increase over 2001 and a seven-percent increase over 2000.
* Provides increased funding for International Space Station development and operations consistent with a strategy of constraining Space Station cost growth. Growth in development and operations is largely offset through budget reductions in Space Station hardware and other Human Space Flight programs and institutional activities. NASA will be undertaking a number of management reforms to bring Space Station costs under control.
* Provides a 64-percent increase over 2001 for NASA's Space Launch Initiative. This increase continues NASA's commitment to provide commercial industry the opportunity to meet NASA's future launch needs and to dramatically reduce space transportation costs and improve space transportation safety and reliability.
* Funds a more robust Mars Exploration Program.
* Funds a science-driven program of prioritized follow-on missions for second-generation Earth Observing System measurements that will provide a greater understanding of how the Earth and its climate are changing, an increase of five percent over 2001.
Initiatives and Redirected Resources
International Space Station: Recent cost growth on the Space Station is estimated at approximately $1 billion for 2001 and 2002 and $4 billion for the next five years. To address this unprecedented cost growth and ensure that the program remains within the five-year budget plan, the President's 2002 Budget will include important decisions regarding the funding and management of the program while preserving the highest priority goals: permanent human presence in space, world-class research in space, and accommodation of international partner elements. Thus, the U.S. core will be complete once the Space Station is ready to accept major international hardware elements. The cost growth is offset in part by redirecting funding from remaining U.S. elements (particularly high-risk elements including the Habitation Module, Crew Return Vehicle, and Propulsion Module). In addition, funding for U.S. research equipment and associated support will be aligned with the assembly build-up. Future funding decisions to develop and deploy any U.S. elements or enhancements beyond completion of the U.S. core will depend on the quality of cost estimates, resolution of technical issues, and the availability of funding through efficiencies within the 2002 Budget runout for Space Station or other Human Space Flight programs and institutional activities. The budget will propose advance appropriations for the Space Station as a further means to cap Station spending-this cap may be adjusted upward if efficiencies and offsets are found in other Human Space Flight programs and institution.
Space Science: To ensure successful execution of programs already underway, two projects with a very large escalation in cost, the Pluto-Kuiper Express and Solar Probe missions, will not be funded. To support a potential, future sprint to the planet Pluto before 2020, additional funds will be directed to key propulsion technology investments. The budget funds a more robust Mars Exploration Program and provides critical technology funding to support future decisions on high-energy astrophysics missions.
Earth Science: NASA has worked with the National Academy of Sciences to develop future Earth Science research priorities and, based on these priorities, has developed plans for the second generation of Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites. NASA's outyear plan for these satellites has been underfunded in recent years, but the budget will provide a five-percent increase in 2002 for a science-driven EOS Follow-On program while discontinuing low-priority remote sensing satellite and environmental application projects to ensure that EOS priorities can go forward.
Space Shuttle: The budget provides for a sustained level of six Space Shuttle flights per year and continues funding for Space Shuttle safety improvements, within which NASA will establish safety investment priorities for Shuttle safety upgrades and critical facilities.
Aero-Space Technology: The budget eliminates lower priority aeronautics programs and reduces under-performing information technology programs.
Potential Reforms
Fulfilling the President's promise to make Government more market-based, NASA will pursue management reforms to promote innovation, open Government activities to competition, and improve the depth and quality of NASA's research and development (R&D) expertise. These reforms, described below, will help reduce NASA's operational burden and focus resources on Government-unique R&D at NASA.
International Space Station: NASA will undertake reforms and develop a plan to ensure that future Space Station costs will remain within the President's 2002 Budget plan. Key elements of this plan will: restore cost estimating credibility, including an external review to validate cost estimates and requirements and suggest additional options as needed; transfer Space Station program management reporting from the Johnson Space Center in Texas to NASA Headquarters until a new program management plan is developed and approved; and open future Station hardware and service procurements to innovation and cost-saving ideas through competition, including launch services and a Non-Government Organization for Space Station research.
Space Shuttle Privatization: NASA will aggressively pursue Space Shuttle privatization opportunities that improve the Shuttle's safety and operational efficiency. This reform will include continued implementation of planned and new privatization efforts through the Space Shuttle prime contract and further efforts to safely and effectively transfer civil service positions and responsibilities to the Space Shuttle contractor.
Space Launch Opportunities: NASA's Space Launch Initiative provides commercial industry with the opportunity to meet NASA's future launch needs, including human access to space, with new launch vehicles that promise to dramatically reduce cost and improve safety and reliability. NASA will undertake management reforms within the Space Launch Initiative, including: ensuring vehicle affordability and competitiveness by limiting requirements to essential needs through commercial services; creating requirements flexibility, where possible, to accommodate innovative industry proposals; validating requirements through external, independent review; implementing a well-integrated risk-reduction investment strategy that makes investments only after requirements and vehicle options are well-understood, to ensure viable competition by the middle of the decade for Station cargo and crew launch services; ensuring no set-aside funds for non-industry vehicles like the Space Shuttle; and achieving affordable, near-term successes in Next Generation Launch Services and Alternate Access to the Space Station, and integrating these near-term activities into longer-term planning.
Critical Capabilities: U.S. academia and industry provide a rich R&D resource that NASA can tap to strengthen its mission capabilities. NASA will develop an integrated, long-term agency plan that ensures a national capability to support NASA's mission by: identifying NASA's critical capabilities and, through the use of external reviews, determining which capabilities must be retained by NASA and which can be discontinued or led outside the agency; expanding collaboration with industry, universities, and other agencies, and outsourcing appropriate activities to fully leverage outside expertise; and pursuing civil service reforms for capabilities that NASA must retain, to ensure recruitment and retention of top science, engineering, and management talent at NASA.
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION : Highlights of 2002 Funding
* Provides $4.5 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF), a $56 million increase from 2001. This level is more than $1 billion greater than 1998.
* Provides approximately $1.5 billion for new research and education awards in 2002, to fund nearly 10,000 new competitively reviewed awards.
* Provides $200 million to begin the President's Math and Science Partnership initiative to provide funds for States to join with institutions of higher education in strengthening math and science education in grades K-12.
* Provides $20 million for multidisciplinary mathematics research. This investment will enhance the transfer of results and applications from mathematics and statistics research to the science and engineering disciplines, challenge the limits of current mathematical theories, and develop a new cadre of researchers who are trained in both mathematics and science. These funds will enhance America's preeminence in mathematical sciences.
* Increases graduate stipends for the Graduate Research Fellowships, the Graduate Teaching Fellowships in K-12 Education, and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships programs. These funds will help attract the best students to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Initiatives
Math and Science Partnerships: As America enters the 21st Century, many of our neediest students are being left behind. The current state of grade K-12 mathematics and science education in the United States raises significant warning signs. The most recent evidence of deficiencies in U.S. math and science education is from the Third International Math and Science Study, which measured American students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades against comparable students in other countries. Although U.S. fourth graders did relatively well in both math and science, by twelfth grade, the last year of mandatory schooling, U.S. students were among the very worst in the world, and in some areas, such as physics, were last. This evidence indicates that our schools are not preparing our students adequately for today's knowledge-based, technologically rich society or to become future scientists and engineers. Among the underlying causes for the poor performance of U.S. students in the areas of math and science, three problems must be addressed: too many teachers teaching these subjects for which they have not been trained; too few students taking advanced coursework; and too few schools offering challenging curriculum and textbooks (Image: National Science Foundation, 6.8% Average Annual Growth, 19982002 [news/usbudget/blueprint/images/34-1.gif, 15 kb])
To address these issues, the President is proposing that the National Science Foundation (NSF) initiate a Math and Science Partnership program to provide funds for States to join with institutions of higher education in strengthening K-12 math and science education. The higher education community recognizes that it has a vested interest in working to improve elementary and secondary math and science achievement. More than 20 States have begun to form partnerships with colleges and universities for the purpose of raising math and science standards for students, providing math and science training for teachers, and creating innovative ways to reach underserved schools. For 2002, the President is requesting $200 million for the Math and Science Partnership program and $1 billion over five years. States that access these funds will be required to establish partnership agreements with State colleges, universities, community colleges and school districts, with the goal of strengthening K-12 math and science education. The success of partnerships between States and institutions of higher education will be measured through performance indicators such as improving student performance on State assessments, increasing student participation in advanced courses in math science and their success in passing advanced placement exams, and increasing the numbers of teachers that major in math or science.
Redirected Resources
The 2001 enacted level for NSF included a number of earmarked and lower-priority projects. While the majority of projects must be assessed on their merits through an extensive review process, many of these projects do not face such scrutiny and often address lower-priority areas or needs. The 2002 Budget does not renew funding for these projects, saving $45 million.
The budget also better focuses facility project resources by maintaining commitments for the Large Hadron Collider, the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, and Terascale Computing Systems. Facility project spending will be reduced by $13 million, reflecting no new starts of major facility projects in 2002.
As part of the Math and Science Partnership initiative, $110 million is redirected from existing NSF education programs toward the initiative's $200 million level in 2002.
At NSF there are several opportunities for management reforms that will assist the agency in carrying out its mission and planning for the future. The Administration has identified at least three management reform opportunities that will help fulfill the President's promise to make Government more results-oriented.
Reorganize Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics: NSF and NASA provide more than 90 percent of Federal funds for academic astronomy research and facilities. Historically, NASA has funded space-based astronomy and NSF has funded ground-based astronomy, as well as astronomy research proposals. Several changes have evolved which suggest that now is the time to assess the Federal Government's management and organization of astronomical research. NSF and NASA will establish a Blue Ribbon Panel to assess the organizational effectiveness of Federal support of astronomical sciences and, specifically, the pros and cons of transferring NSF's astronomy responsibilities to NASA. The panel may also develop alternative options. This assessment will be completed by September 1, 2001.
Improve the Efficiency of the Research Process: The current size of NSF grants and their duration might be resulting in an inefficient research process at U.S. academic institutions. Researchers might be spending too much time writing grant proposals instead of doing actual research. NSF has increased grant size and duration in previous years, particularly through its priority research areas; however, there is little documentation that this is having a positive impact on research output. With the assistance of U.S. academic research institutions, NSF will develop efficiency measures of the research process and determine what is the right grant size for the myriad types of research the agency funds. These metrics and grant size determinations will be developed in time for consideration of the 2003 Budget.
Increase NSF's Ability to Manage Large Facility Projects: NSF is managing several multi-year, large facility projects. NSF's capability to manage proposed projects needs to be enhanced given the magnitude and costs of these projects. NSF will develop a plan to enhance its capability to estimate costs and provide oversight of project development and construction. This plan should help ensure that NSF is able to meet and stick to cost and schedule commitments for major facility projects.
February 27
Gamma-Rays from an Asteroid
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast27feb_2.htm Perched on the surface of asteroid 433 Eros, NASA's NEAR spacecraft is beaming back measurements of gamma-rays leaking from the space rock's dusty soil. February 27, 2001 -- When NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft left for asteroid 433 Eros five years ago, scientists weren't certain what they would find when the probe arrived. Was Eros a 30-km fragment from a planet that broke apart billions of years ago? Or perhaps a jumble of space boulders barely held together by gravity? Was Eros young or old, tough or fragile ... no one knew for sure. But now, after a year in orbit and a daring landing on the asteroid itself, NEAR Shoemaker is beaming back data that could confirm what many scientists have lately come to believe: Asteroid Eros is not a piece of some long-dead planet or a loose collection of space debris. Instead, it's a relic from the dawn of our solar system, one of the original building blocks of planets that astronomers call "planetesimals." As NEAR Shoemaker was heading for its historic landing on Feb. 12, 2001, team members hoped the spacecraft --which was designed to orbit, not land-- would simply survive. When it did survive, they set their sights a little higher. From its perch on the surface of the asteroid, NEAR's gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) can detect key chemical signatures of a planetesimal -- data that scientists are anxious to retrieve. "The gamma-ray instrument is more sensitive on the ground than it was in orbit," says Goddard's Jack Trombka, team leader for the GRS. "And the longer we can accumulate data the better." NASA recently gave the go-ahead for NEAR's mission to continue through Feb. 28th, tacking four days onto an extension granted just after the spacecraft landed. To do its work the GRS relies partly on cosmic rays, high-energy particles accelerated by distant supernova explosions. When cosmic rays hit Eros, they make the asteroid glow, although it's not a glow you can see with your eyes; the asteroid shines with gamma-rays. "Cosmic rays shatter atomic nuclei in the asteroid's soil," explains Trombka. Neutrons that fly away from the cosmic ray impact sites hit other atoms in turn. "These secondary neutrons can excite atomic nuclei (by inelastic scattering) without breaking them apart." Such excited atoms emit gamma-rays that the GRS can decipher to reveal which elements are present. "We can detect cosmic-ray excited oxygen, iron and silicon, along with the naturally radioactive elements potassium, thorium and uranium," says Trombka. Measuring the abundances of these substances is an important test of the planetesimal hypothesis. Planetesimals came to be when the solar system was just a swirling interstellar cloud, slowly collapsing to form the Sun and planets. Dust grains condensed within that primeval gas. The grains were small, but by hitting and sticking together they formed pebble-sized objects that fell into the plane of the rotating nebula. The pebbles accumulated into boulders, which in turn became larger bodies, 1 to 100 km wide. These were planetesimals -- the fundamental building blocks of the planets.
For reasons unknown Eros was never captured by a growing protoplanet. It remained a planetesimal even as other worlds in the solar system grew and matured. Fully-developed planets like Earth are chemically segregated -- that is, they have heavier elements near their cores and lighter ones at the surface. Planetary scientists call this "differentiation." If Eros were a chip from a planet that broke apart, perhaps in the asteroid belt, it would exhibit chemical signatures corresponding to some layer from a differentiated world. For example, Eros might be iron-rich if it came from the core of such a planet or silicon-rich if it came from the crust. Instead, "orbital data from the x-ray spectrometer (a low-energy cousin of the GRS) showed Eros is very much like a type of undifferentiated meteorite we find on Earth called ordinary chondrites," says Andrew Cheng, the NEAR project scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which manages the mission for NASA. Eros seems to harbor a mixture of elements that you would only find in a solar system body unaltered by melting (an unavoidable step in the process of forming rocky planets). But, says Cheng, there is a possible discrepancy. "The abundance of the element sulfur on Eros is less than we would expect from an ordinary chondrite. However, the x-ray spectra tell us only about the uppermost hundred microns of the surface, and we do not know if the sulfur depletion occurs only in a thin surface layer or throughout the bulk of the asteroid." The GRS can go deeper, as much as 10 cm below the surface. Although the instrument can't detect sulfur, it is sensitive to gamma-ray emissions from other elements such as radioactive potassium that are indicators of melting. Like sulfur, potassium is a volatile element -- it easily evaporates when a rock is heated. Finding plenty of potassium would strengthen the conclusion that Eros is an unmelted and primitive body. On the other hand, a widespread dearth of "volatiles" would hint that Eros isn't so primitive after all. It might sound like an ivory-tower question, but knowing the makeup of this asteroid -- both its internal structure and its chemical composition-- has a practical application. The solar system is littered with space rocks more or less like Eros, and many come uncomfortably close to Earth. One day we may need to blow one apart (or deflect one without blowing it apart) to avoid an unpleasant collision. Near-Earth asteroids are also potential mining resources as humans expand into space. In either case, knowing more about them is a good idea! "Our first four data sets are here and they look great," says Jack Trombka. "John Goldsten, the lead engineer for the gamma-ray spectrometer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, has done a fabulous job making the instrument work on the surface, which is a different environment than orbit. "We're just hoping to get as much data as we can before the mission ends." NEAR Shoemaker launched on Feb. 17, 1996 - the first in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, scientifically focused planetary missions -- and became the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid on Feb. 14, 2000. The car-sized spacecraft gathered 10 times more data during its orbit than originally planned, and completed all the mission's science goals before its controlled >descent on February 12, 2001. Funding for the mission extension comes from >the NEAR project.
February 26, 2001
SCIENTISTS FIND EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT MICROBIAL LIFE ON MARS An international team of researchers has discovered compelling evidence that the magnetite crystals in the martian meteorite ALH84001 are of biological origin. The researchers found that the magnetite crystals embedded in the meteorite are arranged in long chains, which they say could have been formed only by once-living organisms. Their results are reported in the Feb. 27 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The chains we discovered are of biological origin," said Dr. Imre Friedmann, an NRC senior research fellow at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and leader of the research team. "Such a chain of magnets outside an organism would immediately collapse into a clump due to magnetic forces," he said. The chains were formed inside organic material whose structure held the crystals together. "The end result looks somewhat like a string of pearls," Friedmann noted. Each magnetite crystal in the chain is a tiny magnet, approximately one-millionth of an inch in diameter.
Magnetite is an iron oxide, similar to iron rust. The chains may have served as 'compasses' for the host magnetotactic bacteria, so named because they navigate with the help of the magnetic crystal chains inside their bodies. The chains were preserved in the meteorite long after the bacteria themselves decayed. The researchers say the magnetite chains probably were flushed into microscopic cracks inside the martian rock after it was shattered by an asteroid impact approximately 3.9 billion years ago. This cataclysmic event on Mars' surface also may have killed the bacteria. The same, or a later, asteroid impact ejected the rock, now a meteorite, into space. Another NASA research group, led by Kathie Thomas-Keprta of NASA's Johnson Space Center, report in the same issue of PNAS that the magnetite crystals inside the meteorite are similar to those formed by 'modern' magnetotactic bacteria now living on Earth. The team studied only single crystals, however, not the elusive chain-like structures. Friedmann's team discovered the crystal chains using a technique that enabled them to 'see' the tiny chains inside the meteorite without destroying them. Besides the chain-like formation, the team discovered that individual crystals are of similar size and shape, do not touch each other and that the chains themselves are flexible, further evidence of biological origin. "Until now, studying life has been like trying to draw a curve using only one data point -- life on Earth," said Friedmann. "Now we have two data points to draw life's curve." The next step is to find the remains of the bacteria themselves, he said. The fact that a small (about 4-pound) meteorite from a planet contains large numbers of bacteria suggests that such bacteria were widespread on the surface of Mars, the researchers say. A stone of similar size from Earth would contain many bacteria. In addition, since magnetotactic bacteria require low levels of oxygen, this finding indicates that photosynthetic organisms, the source of oxygen in the atmosphere, must have been present and active on Mars 3.9 billion years ago. "Finding evidence of life on Mars is one of the central problems in astrobiology research today," said Dr. Michael Meyer, head of NASA's astrobiology program, which funded the research. In addition to his fellowship at NASA Ames, Friedmann, who is best known for discovering microorganisms living inside desert rocks, is professor emeritus of biological science at Florida State University. Members of the research team include Dr. Jacek Wierzchos (University of Lleida, Spain), Dr. Carmen Ascaso (CSIC, Madrid, Spain), and Dr. Michael Winkelhofer (University of Munich, Germany). The meteorite ALH84001 was found in the Allen Hills region of Antarctica in 1984 by researchers supported by the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program, a joint effort by the NSF, the Smithsonian Instituttion and NASA. The Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland manages the program. Full text of the research paper is available at: http://www.pnas.org Images of the magnetite chains inside the ALH84001 meteorite and, for comparison, inside a modern magnetotactic bacterium are at: http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2001/01images/magneticbacteria/bacteria.html Ames Research Center is NASA's lead center for astrobiology, the study of the origin, evolution, dissemination and future of life in the universe. NASA Ames is the location of the central offices of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, an international research consortium.
BACK TO THE TOP
> 2001 Mars Odyssey Photos Seven photos of the illumination testing of the solar panels of the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft have been added to the 2001 Mars Odyssey website: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/2001/orbiter/ksc010209.html Image Archive: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/2001/orbiter/images.html The spacecraft arrived at the Spacecraft Assembly and Encapsulation Facility 2 at Kennedy Space Center on January 4, 2001, where it is undergoing final checkout and assembly. The orbiter will carry three science instruments: Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS), and the Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE). THEMIS will map the mineralogy and morphology of the Martian surface using a high-resolution camera and a thermal infrared imaging spectrometer. The GRS will achieve global mapping of the elemental composition of the surface and determine the abundance of hydrogen in the shallow subsurface. The MARIE will characterize aspects of the near-space radiation environment with regards to the radiation-related risk to human explorers. The Mars Odyssey Orbiter is scheduled for launch on April 7, 2001, aboard a Delta 7925 rocket from Launch Pad 17-A, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
February 26, 2001 NEW EVIDENCE STRENGTHENS CLAIMS OF ANCIENT LIFE ON MARS STUDY OF MARTIAN METEORITE REVEALS MAGNETIC FOSSILS Researchers have found magnetic material in a 4.5-billion-year-old Martian meteorite that could only have been produced by bacteria. This new data strongly supports the primitive life on Mars hypothesis of David McKay and co-authors in 1996. "There are no known reports of any organic process that could produce such magnetites," said Kathie Thomas-Keprta, an astrobiologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center and the lead researcher on the study. The Martian magnetites are identical to those found in a bacteria strain on Earth called MV-1. "This group of magnetite deeply embedded in the Mars meteorite is so similar to the ones produced by the Earth bacteria that they cannot be told apart by any known measurement," said David McKay, a geologist at JSC and a co-author on the paper. "We considered that perhaps earth bacteria or earth magnetite had gotten into the Mars meteorite," McKay continued, "but extensive examination and testing by both our team and many other investigators eliminated that possibility." Scientists generally agree that ALH84001 is a member of the group of 16 meteorites found on Earth that originated on Mars. The potato-sized igneous rock is the oldest of them about 4.5 billion years. It lay in Antarctic ice for more than 13,000 years. But the biogenic-type magnetite crystals are embedded in 3.9-billion-year-old carbonates within ALH84001. Previous work by co-author Chris Romanek, of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has shown that these carbonates formed on Mars; thus the magnetite crystals must also have formed on Mars. Using electron microscopy, team members examined the Martian magnetites still embedded in the carbonate and also removed about 600 crystals and examined the individual particles to determine their chemical composition and crystal geometry. "These crystals are so tiny, ranging from 10 to 200 nanometers, that nearly a billion of them would fit on the head of a pin," said Thomas-Keprta. The authors found that about a quarter of the Martian magnetites from ALH84001 are identical to magnetites produced on Earth by the magnetotactic bacteria strain MV-1, which has been extensively studied by co-author Dennis Bazylinski, a geobiologist and microbiologist at Iowa State University who has developed many ways of culturing these difficult to grow microorganisms. No one has found terrestrial inorganic magnetites, produced either naturally or in the laboratory, that mimic all the properties displayed by biogenic magnetites. "There is currently no known inorganic chemical means of producing these magnetite crystals with their unique morphologies," he said. Magnetite (Fe3O4) is produced inorganically on Earth. But the magnetite crystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria are different they are chemically pure and defect-free. Their size and shape is distinct. Magnetotactic bacteria arrange these magnetite crystals in chains within their cells. These characteristics make the magnetite crystals very efficient compasses, which are essential to the survival behavior of the bacteria by helping them locate sources of food and energy. "Mars is smaller than Earth and it developed faster," co-author Simon Clemett of Lockheed-Martin at JSC noted. "Consequently, bacteria able to produce tiny magnets could have evolved much earlier on Mars." "The process of evolution has driven these bacteria to make perfect little bar magnets, which differ strikingly from anything found outside of biology," added, Joe Kirschvink, a geobiologist at Caltech and a co-author of the paper. "In fact, an entire industry devoted to making small magnetic particles for magnetic tapes and computer disk drives has tried and failed for the past 50 years to find a way to make similar particles. A good fossil is something that is difficult to make inorganically, and these magnetosomes are very good fossils." Mars has long been understood to provide sources of light energy and chemical energy sufficient to support life. Early Mars, the authors note, may have had even more chemical energy produced by active volcanism and hydrothermal activity. Also, when the team asserted in 1996 that Martian meteorite ALH84001 showed signs of life existing on Mars, that planet was not known to have ever had a strong magnetic field. But since then, the Mars Global Surveyor has observed magnetized stripes in the crust of Mars that show a strong magnetic field existed early in the planet,s history, about the same time as the carbonate containing the unique magnetites was formed. Surface features also suggest that early Mars had large oceans and lakes. These attributes, coupled with a CO2-rich atmosphere, provided the necessary environment for the evolution of microbes similar to the fossils found in ALH84001. A team of 10 researchers collaborated on the four-year study, which was published Feb. 27 in a special Astrobiology issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The team, led by Thomas-Keprta of Lockheed Martin at Johnson Space Center, was funded by the NASA
Astrobiology Institute. Co-authors of the study are Simon Clemett and Susan Wentworth of Lockheed Martin at the JSC; Dennis Bazylinski of Iowa State University (funded by the National Science Foundation); Joseph Kirschvink of the California Institute of Technology; David McKay, Everett Gibson and Mary Fae McKay of JSC; and Christopher Romanek of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. For a more technical discussion of this paper please see the following Web site: http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/astrobiology/biomarkers/recentnews.html
February 26, 2001 CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS WITHSTANDS CRITICISM, GAINS SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT Researchers who stunned the world in 1996 with the announcement that a Martian meteorite contained evidence of ancient life on the red planet have released new evidence that strengthens their original hypothesis and allays many of the criticisms leveled at the first paper. In this latest paper, published in the scientific journal Precambrian Research Feb. 17, two additional Martian meteorites were examined - Nakhla and Shergotty, 1.3 billion and 165 to 175 million years old, respectively. Both younger meteorites showed the same evidence of microfossils and other remnants of early life as the original meteorite, the 4.5-billion-year-old ALH84001. "If the features observed in the two younger Martian meteorites are confirmed to have a biogenic origin, life may have existed on Mars from 3.9 billion years ago to as recently as 165 to 175 million years ago," said Everett K. Gibson, a geochemist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston and the senior author on the paper. Clusters of very small spheres found in the two younger meteorites are very similar to those seen in bacteria-containing samples from deep beneath the Earth's surface in the Columbia River Basalts in eastern Washington. Whether or not these sphere-like structures are true biomarkers has yet to be determined, but the fact that they are embedded in or coated by clays that are clearly of Martian origin suggests that they too were formed on Mars. Studies using a transmission electron microscope have provided further evidence of fossils in the original Martian meteorite, ALH84001. This dence is in the form of tiny magnetite crystals, identical to those used by aqueous bacteria on Earth as compasses to find food and energy. Magnetite (Fe3O4) is produced inorganically on Earth, but the magnetite crystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria are different they are chemically pure and defect-free, with a distinct size and shape. Magnetotactic bacteria arrange these magnetite crystals in chains within their cells. Additional studies showed that a substantial portion of the hydrocarbons found in the meteorites were in them when they left Mars and are not the result of terrestrial contamination. There is also strong evidence that most of the carbonates in all three meteorites was formed at a time when Mars was warmer and wetter - an environment much more conducive to life than the current surface of Mars. Terrestrial contamination of extraterrestrial samples is an issue not only with these meteorites, according to the authors, but one that is being studied in relation to the future return of Martian samples to Earth. "It's clear that we need to better understand the biosignatures of terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples so that when Martian samples are eventually brought back to Earth, we can determine the presences or absence of life with certainty," Gibson said. "However, if water exists beneath the Martian surface, why shouldn,t life be present today on Mars?" The other authors of this work, which was funded by NASA's Exobiology Program and NASA's Astrobiology Institute, are David S. McKay of JSC; Kathie L. Thomas-Keprta, Susan J. Wentworth, and Mary Sue Bell of Lockheed Martin at JSC; Frances Westall, a National Research Council Fellow at the Lunar & Planetary Institute in Houston; Andrew Steele and Jan Toporski of the University of Portsmouth, England; and Christopher S. Romanek of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Of these, Gibson, McKay, Thomas-Keprta and Romanek were authors of the original paper on the subject. For a more technical discussion of this paper please see the following Web site:http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/astrobiology/biomarkers/recentnews.html BACK TO THE TOP
February 26, 2000
VIEWS OF IO'S BUSY VOLCANOES COME FROM GALILEO
New imagery of Jupiter's moon Io, including a flyover animation of one volcanic area and three-dimensional views of another, shows a world so volcanically hyperactive that nearly its entire surface is likely to be lava that's still in various stages of cooling.
The images are based on observations made by NASA's Galileo spacecraft during flights close to Io in 1999 and 2000, and are available online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jovianmoons
and from the University of Arizona's Planetary Image Research Laboratory, Tucson, at
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/Galileo/Releases/ . Scientists are studying these images and other Galileo data for a better understanding of how Io's mountains form, how much heat Io generates internally and other questions. The extreme heat of the lava erupting on Io makes that world today a model for the type of volcanism Earth experienced billions of years ago.
Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter and its moons since December 1995. More information about the mission is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo .
February 23, 2001
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED BY TWIN-TELESCOPE SKY SURVEY
After scanning the entire sky and capturing breathtaking and scientifically important images of galaxies, stars and other celestial objects, a pair of infrared telescopes has finished its survey work.
For the past three and a half years, the twin telescopes of the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), located in Arizona and Chile, have conducted the first high-resolution digital survey of the complete sky. The successful completion of observations marks a milestone in modern astronomy. For the next two years, data processing will continue for the 24 terabytes of archive data, which is enough to fill more than 2,000 hard drives on an average home computer.
"These telescopes have given us the first detailed global view of our Milky Way galaxy and the galaxies that lie beyond," said Dr. Michael Skrutskie, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2MASS principal investigator. "The resulting databases and source catalogues are a treasure trove which will be mined for discovery by scientists and the public alike for decades to come." The University of Massachusetts was responsible for the development and construction of the 2MASS telescopes and cameras and managed the collection of survey data.
"The 2MASS telescopes and cameras operated with incredible efficiency and were workhorses for more than a thousand nights," said Dr. Roc Cutri, project scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The facilities collected data 99.5 percent of the available time during the mission, and only a few nights were lost due to hardware failures. That's a remarkable record for any astronomical observatory on the ground or in space."
IPAC developed the software system to convert raw digital data from the telescopes into stunning images and catalogues useful to astronomers. IPAC also archives and distributes those data to the public via the Internet, in essence, turning home computers into desktop observatories.
The 2MASS survey is the most thorough census ever made of our Milky Way galaxy and the nearby universe. It detects infrared wavelengths that are longer than the red light in the rainbow of visible colors. Infrared light penetrates dust more effectively than visible light, so it is particularly useful for detecting objects obscured within the Milky Way, as well as the faint heat of very cool objects that give off very little visible light of their own.
To cover the entire sky, 2MASS used two highly automated, 1.3-meter (51-inch) diameter telescopes, one at Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., the other at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The Arizona telescope began operations in June of 1997, while the Chilean telescope began scanning the sky in March 1998. Both facilities completed their work on Feb. 15.
Catalogues containing more than 300 million stars and galaxies extracted from the images have begun to yield significant astronomical discoveries, and will provide an invaluable reference frame to steer NASA's Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), scheduled for a 2002 launch, and other future infrared space missions.
The survey has:
- Uncovered numerous stars with such unique characteristics that astronomers have had to update a century-old classification system of known types of stars, and also unveiled the coolest - brown dwarfs, or failed stars, known to date; - Detected previously unknown galaxies seen behind the disk of our own Milky Way; - Mapped new star-birth regions both in our Milky Way and in other galaxies; and - Discovered many new, dust-obscured active galaxies and quasars in the distant reaches of the universe that were missed by earlier surveys that used visible and ultraviolet light.
The 2MASS project is a collaborative effort between the University of Massachusetts and IPAC. Part of NASA's Origins Program, 2MASS is primarily funded by NASA's Office of Space Science. Additional funding was provided by the National Science Foundation. In addition to enabling groundbreaking new scientific discoveries, 2MASS results will also benefit future Origins missions, including SIRTF and the Next Generation Space Telescope, and will also help scientists plan observations for the Hubble Space Telescope and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
A sampling of 2MASS images is posted at http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery . Additional information about 2MASS is available at http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass and at: http://pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html .
February 21, 2001
GALILEO MILLENNIUM MISSION STATUS
Engineers are narrowing down possible causes for an intermittent problem with the camera on NASA's Galileo spacecraft that may be related to effects of Jupiter's radiation belts.
The spacecraft signaled an alarm from the camera system three times while Galileo passed close to Jupiter from Dec. 28, 2000, to Jan. 1, 2001. Each time, the camera either restored itself to normal functioning or was restored by commands from the ground. The incidents appear to be related to a single similar event five months earlier, and the underlying cause may be cumulative exposure of electronic components to the intensely radioactive environment near Jupiter, said Dr. Eilene Theilig, Galileo project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Galileo, now in its sixth year of what was originally planned as a two-year mission orbiting Jupiter, has weathered more than three times the radiation dose it was designed to withstand.
"We are able to clear the fault by power-cycling the instrument -- turning the power off and on -- and reloading its memory. The fact that the camera can fix itself without our intervention is puzzling but provides valuable information to analyze what is happening," Theilig said. Engineers have examined a small sampling of the camera data recorded while Galileo passed through the inner portion of the Jupiter system in late December. The sampling indicates that more than half of the 120 pictures taken during that encounter period were captured properly, including all the ones taken Dec. 28 as the spacecraft flew by the moon Ganymede during an eclipse. In pictures taken while the camera fault was present, however, images are blank, as if entirely saturated with light. The first transmissions of complete images from the encounter will come later this month.
Experiments at JPL with an engineering model of the camera system are aiding analysis of events on the spacecraft. The main suspect is an amplifier in the circuitry that processes signals from the camera's CCD (charge-coupled device), a light-sensor grid akin to the ones in video cameras. "The investigation is continuing," Theilig said. "When we get a better understanding of the fault and what triggers it, we should be able to identify some workarounds, such as planning ahead to power-cycle the camera at appropriate times, so we can minimize the impact to our imaging objectives."
Galileo's next encounter will be a flyby of Jupiter's moon Callisto on May 25. Additional information about the mission is available at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/ . Galileo was launched in 1989 and began orbiting Jupiter in 1995. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. BACK TO THE TOP
STUDENTS UNCOVER BAFFLING MARTIAN BOULDERS
In a case of beginner's luck, a group of international students, who won the chance to image Mars with a NASA spacecraft camera, have stumbled upon a surprising cluster of dark-colored boulders situated in the middle of light-colored terrain.
The students' discovery has so far baffled veteran Mars scientists. The mystery boulders, found in images captured by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., cover one of three Martian sites targeted by the young scientists. How the boulders got there and what geological history they represent on Mars are questions scientists still need to answer.
"It's puzzling," said Michael Carr of the U.S. Geological Survey. "I looked at a few pictures around [the area] and couldn't find anything to explain it. Very puzzling! These are huge boulders. There are no indications of any outcrops that could shed such boulders."
"The location and nature of these boulders is unusual, but their shape and distribution -- in respect to the slope upon which they sit -- is consistent with a boulder shattered by weathering. The fall to their present location could also have broken the boulders apart. The mystery is why so much of the rest of the slope is smooth and devoid of blocks," said Dr. Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard the Global Surveyor spacecraft.
Images of the two other sites chosen by the students revealed an equatorial Martian region with layers of sediment, possibly deposited by flowing water, and layered terrain of a Martian polar cap.
The students, all members of the Planetary Society's week-long Red Rover Goes to Mars Training Mission, range in age from 10 to 16. Under the supervision of scientists at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, Calif., they studied imaging data from Global Surveyor and selected interesting areas that coincided with the spacecraft's current orbital position around the red planet. They also selected a candidate landing site for a possible sample return mission, to be imaged sometime in the next five months when Global Surveyor's orbit takes it past the target area.
"This kind of opportunity makes me wish I were a student again," said Michelle Viotti, lead for the Mars Public Engagement Program at JPL. "For those who are still in school, we hope to open up many more opportunities in the near future for students to participate personally in the exploration of Mars."
Images of the students' three sites, a close-up of the mystery boulders and information on the students and their training mission are available at http://planetary.org . The fledgling scientists were chosen through an essay contest from more than 10,000 entrants worldwide. The four girls and five boys represent Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, Taiwan and the United States.
The Planetary Society's Red Rover Goes to Mars project is conducted in cooperation with NASA and JPL. JPL manages NASA's Mars Global Surveyor mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C., and Malin Space Science Systems built and operates the Mars Orbiter Camera. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
February 16, 2001
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS MAKE HISTORY IMAGING MARTIAN TERRAIN
Nine budding scientists can all pat themselves on the back, having become the first-ever elementary and high school students to direct a camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft and image Martian sites.
The images from the spacecraft, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/redrover . They reveal an equatorial region with layers of sediment possibly deposited by flowing water, layered terrain of a Martian polar cap and an area in the middle latitudes of Mars that features dunes, valleys and mysterious black boulders. Scientists don't yet know how the boulders got to this area.
The students, ranging in age from 10 to 16, were members of the Planetary Society's weeklong Red Rover Goes to Mars Training Mission. Under the supervision of scientists at Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif., who operate the Mars Orbiter Camera on board Global Surveyor, the fledgling scientists used imaging data to select areas that coincided with the spacecraft's current orbital position around the red planet. The students also selected a candidate landing site for a possible sample return mission, to be imaged sometime in the next five months when the Global Surveyor's orbit takes it past the target area.
The four girls and five boys, representing Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, Taiwan and the United States, were chosen through an essay contest from a group of 80 semi- finalists. Information about the students and their training mission is available at http://planetary.org .
February 15, 2001
HOW TO FLY A SPACECRAFT: ON-LINE TUTORIAL AVAILABLE
"The Basics of Space Flight," a popular, longtime Internet offering that teaches the essentials of operating interplanetary spacecraft missions, has been updated and is now available, courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics .
The self-teaching guide, created by JPL spacecraft operations engineer David Doody, was originally created almost a decade ago to help JPL spacecraft operators understand the concepts of and relationships between various specialized elements of a space mission, such as spacecraft engineering, mission design, launch and telecommunications. Since then, "Basics of Space Flight" has engendered broad appeal inside and outside of NASA for aerospace professionals and armchair space explorers alike. It also enjoys growing popularity among high school and college students and faculty.
"Our purpose was to cover the broad range of all subject matter that plays into robotic spaceflight," said Doody. "It covers broadly, but not deeply, all the elements of a robotic space mission. Any one of the topics we touch on could involve a lifetime of specialization." Doody said he drew upon contributions from experts in different fields at JPL and numerous other institutions.
The module, unavailable in printed form, is intended to be used online via the World Wide Web. Interactive quizzes provide users with a measurement of their progress.
"Basics of Spaceflight" was created by Doody for JPL's Telecommunications and Mission Operations Directorate under NASA's Office of Space Science. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
NEAR SHOEMAKER GETS NEW LEASE ON LIFE AT HOME ON ASTEROID
NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft, the first spacecraft to touch down and operate on the surface of an asteroid, will not be immediately shut down after all, NASA officials announced yesterday.
Brought to a successful landing on Feb. 12 with guidance from the NEAR Shoemaker navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., the spacecraft's mission will be extended for up to 10 days to gather data from a scientific instrument that could provide unprecedented information about the surface and subsurface composition of the asteroid Eros.
Three days after touchdown, NEAR Shoemaker is still in communication with the NEAR team at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, MD. Earlier this week, the team sent commands to NEAR Shoemaker and guided the robotic researcher to a gentle touchdown on a rock-strewn plain on the asteroid. The spacecraft gently hit the surface at 12:02 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (3:02 p.m. EST). It had slowed to a gentle speed of between 1.5 and 1.8 meters per second (less than 4 miles per hour) just before finally coming to rest after a journey of 3.2 billion kilometers (2 billion miles).
Mission operators say the touchdown may have been one of the slowest planetary landings in history. They also have a better picture of what happened in the moments after the landing. What they originally thought was the spacecraft bouncing may have been little more than short hop or "jiggle" on the surface; the thrusters were still firing when the craft hit the surface, but cut off on impact; and NEAR Shoemaker came down only about 200 meters (650 feet) from the projected landing site.
"It essentially confirmed that all the mathematical models we proposed for a controlled descent would work," said Dr. Bobby Williams, NEAR navigation team leader at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "You never know if they'll work until you test them, and this was like our laboratory. The spacecraft did what we expected it to do, and everyone's real happy about that."
On Tuesday, Feb. 13, the NEAR mission operations team decided against another engine firing that could have lifted the space probe off the asteroid's surface. There were initial concerns that it might be necessary to adjust the spacecraft's orientation in order to receive telemetry from the ground. However, NEAR Shoemaker landed with a favorable orientation, and there is no problem with receiving information. Mission managers have decided it is not necessary to move the spacecraft from its resting place on the surface of Eros.
The spacecraft spent the last year in a close-orbit study of asteroid 433 Eros, a near-Earth asteroid that is currently 196 million miles from Earth. During that time it collected 10 times more data than originally planned and completed all its science goals before its descent to the asteroid.
Funding for the mission extension will come from the NEAR Project.
The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft's historic soft landing on asteroid 433 Eros Feb. 12 turned out to be a mission planner's dream -- providing NEAR team members with more scientific and engineering information than they ever expected from the carefully designed series of descent maneuvers.
"We put the first priority on getting high-resolution images of the surface and the second on putting the spacecraft down safely -- and we got both," says NEAR Mission Director Dr. Robert Farquhar of the Applied Physics Laboratory, which manages the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission for NASA. "This could not have worked out better."
NEAR Shoemaker snapped 69 detailed pictures during the final 5 kilometers (3 miles) of its descent, the highest resolution images ever obtained of an asteroid. The camera delivered clear pictures from as close as 120 meters (about 400 feet) showing features as small as one centimeter (one-third inch) across. The images also included several things that piqued the curiosity of NEAR scientists, such as fractured boulders, a football-field sized crater filled with dust, and a mysterious area where the surface appears to have collapsed.
"These spectacular images have started to answer the many questions we had about Eros," says Dr. Joseph Veverka, NEAR imaging team leader from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., "but they also revealed new mysteries that we will explore for years to come."
NEAR Shoemaker launched on Feb. 17, 1996 -- the first in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, scientifically focused planetary missions -- and became the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid on Feb. 14, 2000. The car-sized spacecraft gathered 10 times more data during its orbit than originally planned, and completed all the mission's science goals before Monday's controlled descent.
JPL INSTRUMENT ONBOARD SPACE STATION
The world's smallest high-performance mass spectrometer, newly delivered to the International Space Station, may play a critical role in detecting leaks outside the orbiting facility.
Delivered last week to the space station by Space Shuttle Atlantis, the instrument will be available in the airlock for use by astronauts during their spacewalks. The device was specifically designed for use outside the space station. It can detect ammonia, rocket propellant, oxygen, nitrogen and water leaks.
"The instrument will promote spaceflight safety for the International Space Station," said Dr. Ara Chutjian of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Chutjian is the principal investigator on the instrument, called the quadrupole mass spectrometer array.
The mass spectrometer, about 5 centimeters long (about 2 inches), is part of a shoebox-sized system with software and visual readout called the trace gas analyzer, developed in collaboration with NASA's Johnson Space Center and subcontractor Oceaneering Space Systems, both in Houston. The whole unit weighs about 2.3 kilograms (5 pounds) and can be placed on an astronaut's chest pack, where it can easily point toward the areas under inspection. A small screen displays a graph that reports the detection of specific gases and their amounts, indicating to the astronauts a potential safety risk.
"JPL has developed the smallest mass spectrometer ever produced for either manned or robotic spaceflight," said Chutjian. "On missions to Mars and beyond, where commodities will be at a premium, miniaturizing devices while maintaining their performance is crucial to mission success. We feel the device is very versatile and envision it being used in a cabin or airlock both for long-duration human flight missions and for planetary on-site life detection."
The instrument can detect ammonia coolant leaks that may arise from the many quick-disconnect fittings on the U.S. laboratory module Destiny. Cooling is required to maintain a uniform temperature as the space station travels through the temperature extremes of direct sunlight and shadow. On Saturday, February 10, during the first spacewalk, an obvious leak occurred while astronauts installed the coolant ammonia lines to the Destiny module. The trace gas analyzer was not used because the leak was obvious, but the instrument will remain on the space station for future use. JPL scientists were on standby for consulting with NASA during all three spacewalks. The present generation of quadrupole mass spectrometers being flown on the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn are based on 1970s technology. They weigh approximately 9 to 12 kilograms (20 to 24 pounds) and consume about 25 watts of power. The mass spectrometer in the trace gas analyzer that is currently flying on the space station is smaller and consumes less power.
Three years ago, JPL scientists were given the challenge to create a small, hand-held mass spectrometer for use by astronauts in flight during their spacewalks. JPL had to reduce the sensor size while maintaining as nearly as possible the performance of the large commercial units the size of a five-drawer cabinet. They did just that. The new system maintains a mass range, resolution, precision and stability comparable to larger units.
"We envision using this device in the future for other applications like studying planetary geology, doing isotopic analysis, detecting surface-evolved gases on Jupiter's moon Europa, comets and asteroids and testing air and water quality on Earth," said Dr. Murray Darrach, cognizant scientist who also worked on the device at JPL.
A paper and photos on the trace gas analyzer are available at http://technology.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/gl_pages/mass_spec2.html.
NASA's Office of Space Science and Office of Biological and Physical Research funded work on the device. Under contract from JPL, Johnson Space Center contracted Oceaneering Space Systems to develop a package or casing for the mass spectrometer and to conduct the final tests on the instrument before flight. Managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, JPL is the lead U.S. center for robotic exploration of the solar system.
February 14, 2001
BUDDING YOUNG SCIENTISTS SET THEIR SIGHTS ON MARTIAN SOIL
For the first-time ever, student scientists will direct a camera on board NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, currently orbiting the red planet, and image interesting sites on the Martian terrain.
Nine students, ranging in age from 10 to 15, were selected from more than 10,000 entrants worldwide to serve on the Planetary Society's weeklong Red Rover Goes to Mars Training Mission. As mission members, the group works with imaging data from the Global Surveyor spacecraft, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to choose a candidate landing site for a possible future Martian sample return mission. (The chosen site will be imaged once the spacecraft reaches that particular region of the planet.) In addition, under the supervision of Drs. Michael Malin and Ken Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, Calif., the students will image three interesting Martian sites with Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera.
The students' achievements and findings will be announced at a student press conference at LEGOLAND in Carlsbad, Calif. on Feb. 16.
"We're really beginning to expand opportunities for the public -- and for students in particular -- to participate directly in Mars exploration," said Michelle Viotti, lead for the Mars Public Engagement Program at JPL. "It's all about sharing the adventure, and it's exciting, because some of these students might even end up playing major roles in NASA missions one day."
The students, representing Brazil, Hungary, India, Poland, Taiwan and the United States, were chosen through an essay contest from a group of 80 semi-finalists. Information about the students and their training mission is available at http://planetary.org .
February 13, 2001
JPL NAVIGATORS GUIDE NEAR TO HISTORIC LANDING ON ASTEROID EROS
With fingers flying across calculator keypads as new guidance data flowed in, JPL space navigators yesterday used fast math, and lots of it, to help carefully nudge NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft to its historic touchdown on the surface of asteroid Eros.
The success of the landing, and the spacecraft's continuing communications with controllers via NASA's JPL- managed Deep Space Network, astounded even the most optimistic of scientists and engineers associated with the mission.
"Unbelievable," was how deputy navigation team chief Jim Miller of JPL described the landing and the fact that the spacecraft is still alive and communicating with Earth.
NEAR Shoemaker project managers at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, Md., reported today that the team is assessing the overall health and performance of the spacecraft and evaluating ways to gather additional information from the craft. A decision on how to do that could be reached as early as today, mission managers said.
Eros is about the size of Manhattan Island. NEAR Shoemaker landed on a rock-strewn plain of the asteroid at 12:02:10 Pacific Standard Time (3:02:10 EST) on Monday, Feb. 12. It had slowed to a gentle 1.9 meters per second (4 miles per hour) just before finally coming to rest after a journey of 3.2 billion kilometers (2 billion miles).
Cheers and congratulations filled the NEAR Shoemaker mission operations center at Maryland's APL yesterday as images and engineering data arrived from the spacecraft. APL built the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA.
The NEAR Shoemaker navigation team at JPL is headed by Bobby Williams and includes Miller, Bill Owen, Mike Wang, Cliff Helfrich, Peter Antreasian and Steve Chesley. JPL's Dr. Donald Yeomans serves as the mission's radio science principal investigator, and JPLers Jon Gorgini and Alex Konopliv are team members.
The last image from NEAR Shoemaker was snapped a mere 120 meters (394 feet) from the asteroid's surface and covers an area 6 meters (20 feet) wide. As NEAR Shoemaker touched down, it began sending a beacon, assuring the team that the small spacecraft had landed gently. The signal was identified by radar science data, and about an hour later was locked onto by NASA's Deep Space Network antennas, which will monitor the spacecraft until Feb. 14.
NEAR Shoemaker's final descent started with an engine firing at 7:31 a.m. PST (10:31 a.m. EST), which nudged the spacecraft toward Eros from about 16 miles (26 kilometers) away. Then four braking maneuvers brought the spacecraft to rest on the asteroid's surface in an area just outside a saddle-shaped depression, Himeros. When it touched down, NEAR Shoemaker became the first spacecraft ever to land, or even attempt to land, on an asteroid. The success was sweetened by the fact that it was not designed as a lander.
The spacecraft spent the last year in a close-orbit study of asteroid 433 Eros, a near-Earth asteroid that is currently 316 million kilometers (196 million miles) from Earth. During that time it collected 10 times more data than originally planned and completed all its science goals before attempting its descent to the asteroid.
For mission updates, images and other information, see http://near.jhuapl.edu .
February 9, 2001
VOLPE APPOINTED MANAGER OF MARS SUBSURFACE TECHNOLOGY
Richard Volpe, former manager of robotic autonomy architecture at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has been named manager of JPL's Mars Regional Mobility and Subsurface Access Technology office.
In this new role, Volpe will oversee and coordinate the technology and development for next-generation Mars surface and subsurface exploration. This will include overseeing demonstrations of future mission concepts.
"The intent for these missions is to increase the level of autonomy for the systems, particularly rovers," said Volpe. The Mars Exploration Rovers in 2003 will demonstrate surface mobility, he said. "We hope to use new capabilities like stereo-vision, obstacle avoidance and voyaging away from the landing site."
However, Volpe says that the objective is to create rovers that will not need to stop and communicate with operators whenever they encounter problems. "If a rover has problems, it needs to phone home. We want to make it smarter. We want to minimize the detailed level of operator interaction and increase system performance and science data return." With this in mind, Volpe said, he hopes to create a rover that could travel longer distances and carry out operations for several days without communicating with Earth.
Volpe has been with JPL for 10 years. He also worked on the Long Range Science Rover Desert Field tests with the rover Rocky 7, which helped to make the proposed 2003 rover mission a possibility. Volpe received his bachelor's degree in physics from Loyola College in Baltimore, Md., and his master's and doctorate in applied physics from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pa. Volpe is a resident of Pasadena.
live webcast
During a live webcast on Tuesday, Feb. 13, an experienced mission planner for interplanetary spacecraft will explain how to choose the best routes for getting to destinations such as Mercury, Mars and Saturn.
Charley Kohlhase, who has led trip-planning efforts for NASA missions to most of the planets in the solar system, will also describe how spacecraft can use the gravity of one planet to gain a "slingshot" boost toward a more distant destination.
The 90-minute live webcast, "From Ellipses to Gravity Assist," from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will begin at 4:30 p.m. PST (7:30 p.m. EST) at http://www.liveonthenet.com/show.cgi?/2001/nasa/show104/ .
Tuning in requires free pre-registration with LiveOnTheNet at http://www.liveonthenet.com . Questions for Kohlhase may be submitted to webcast@jpl.nasa.gov . Additional information about the webcast is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .
Kohlhase will begin with the simple notion of an ellipse, easily created by young viewers, then move on to Kepler's laws and curves such as parabolas and hyperbolas to slowly build a framework for understanding how mission designers at JPL work out their special flight paths to planets. The gravity-assist strategy was first used in 1973 to send NASA's Mariner spacecraft to Mercury by way of Venus. Six weeks ago, NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew near Jupiter for a gravity assist necessary for getting Cassini to Saturn.
Kohlhase designed spacecraft missions at JPL, including Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Cassini missions, from the 1960s through the 1990s, twice receiving NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal, and he continues to consult for JPL. He is also an active artist, author and environmentalist, and has innovated numerous projects and products to communicate space science to the public.
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
February 7, 2001
WHY DAZZLING STARS ARE GIVEN BORING BUT USEFUL NAMES
Of the 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, only a handful have colorful names, while the rest are designated by letters and numbers that are the stellar equivalent of a Social Security card.
The colossal task of naming stars lies with the International Astronomical Union, an organization of professional astronomers that is the only internationally recognized authority for assigning names to celestial bodies. Scientists and space agencies worldwide recognize and use its names.
With a few exceptions of stars whose heritage is rooted in ancient nomenclature, celestial bodies are named with mundane catalogue numbers based on their positions in the sky. These names, like PSR0531+219, may not sound very romantic, but astronomers say it's the only way they can keep track of the stars and find them again. As modern technology enables scientists to detect more stars, the International Astronomical Union updates its catalogue.
"With more stars needing names, astonomers have been running out of numbers, so it has been necessary to add digits, just as phone companies add new area codes as the population grows," said Dr. Rolf Danner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Danner is a scientist with NASA's Origins Program, a series of missions to study the formation of galaxies, stars, planets and life. One Origins mission, the Space Interferometry Mission, will pinpoint the location of stars with greater precision than ever before possible.
Long ago, ancient Arabic astronomers named most of the brightest stars, like Algol and Rigel. Greek astronomers named some, like Sirius, while Romans named others, like Regulus.
Stars are also named after the constellation, or area in the sky, where they are found. Astronomers have divided the sky into 88 constellations. The brightest stars in a constellation are named with a Greek letter, starting with alpha for the brightest. For example, the brightest star in the constellation Orion is named Alpha Orionis. Ancient Arabic astronomers called it Betelgeuse.
More information about how stars are named can be found at the International Astronomical Union website at http://www.iau.org/starnames.html . More information on Origins is available at http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov . JPL manages Origins for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
February 6, 2001
HUNTINGTON LIBRARY TRACES HUMAN FASCINATION WITH SPACE
Vintage telescopes, astronomy manuscripts dating back to the 13th century, a Moon rock and NASA pictures of distant galaxies are displayed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif., in an exhibit exploring humanity's quest to understand the cosmos.
The exhibit, called "Star Struck: One Thousand Years of the Art and Science of Astronomy," features images taken by NASA/JPL planetary missions over the past four decades, along with historic astronomical instruments and important works by Galileo, Cassini, Huygens and other early astronomers.
"NASA and JPL have been part of creating a new era of observing the universe by sending probes to the planets in our solar system and putting telescopes in space that can observe the universe in much greater detail," said Dr. Edward Stone, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Stone advised the Huntington Library in assembling the exhibit.
The three astronomical themes included in the exhibit, Stone said, are: What is our place in the universe? How do we observe the universe to understand that? What have we seen that has allowed us to understand better our place in the universe?
Visitors to the exhibit, which runs until May 13, will also see the first hand-drawn star map of the southern hemisphere and a 1913 letter from Albert Einstein asking astronomer George Ellery Hale, founder of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Mountain observatories, to review his new theory of general relativity.
This exhibit is the first in "The Universe" series of space-related events in the Pasadena area in coming months. Other institutions and organizations taking part are the California Institute of Technology, Armory Center for the Arts, Art Center College of Design, Norton Simon Museum, One Colorado, Pacific Asia Museum and Southwest Chamber Music.
For hours, admission and more information on the Huntington Library, see http://www.huntington.org . For information on space exploration and astronomical objects, see JPL's website at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov . JPL, a NASA center, is a division of Caltech.
February 5, 2001
JPL LAUNCHES "SATURDAYS IN SPACE" IN PASADENA
People visiting the popular Old Pasadena district will become sidewalk space explorers when scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena bring telescopes, photos and hands-on activities to the One Colorado courtyard on five consecutive Saturdays in February and March.
This series of events, called "Saturdays in Space," is being held in conjunction with The Universe, a Pasadena-based celebration and exploration of the cosmos.
"JPL is literally bringing some of its activities onto the streets of Pasadena, so it's a great opportunity for the public to talk to the scientists and see first-hand what we do here," said Kimberly Lievense, manager of JPL's Public Services Office.
The One Colorado courtyard is located on Colorado Boulevard between Fair Oaks Avenue and Delacey Street.
"Saturdays in Space" is a collaborative effort organized by JPL, Carnegie Observatories, the Mount Wilson Institute/Mount Wilson Observatory Association and the Telescopes in Education Foundation. "Saturdays in Space" will include:
- Feb. 10, 12 to 5 p.m.--Observe the Sun and Become a Planet or Moon Safely observe the Sun through solar telescopes. Take part in an interactive family program where children become planets and moons. Learn about the historic Mount Wilson Observatory. - Feb. 17, 2 to 7 p.m.--The Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in Real Time and Film Observe the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn through telescopes. See historic photos of the Mount Wilson Observatory and newer photos from the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Watch an evening screening of the science fiction film "The Boy From Mars," projected on the wall of the Crate and Barrel store. - Feb. 24, 12 to 5 p.m.--Missions to the Sun Safely observe the Sun through solar telescopes. Learn about current and future space missions to study the Sun. - March 3, 1 to 7 p.m.--Observe the Sun, Moon and Two Giant Planets Safely observe the Sun through solar telescopes. After dark, observe the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn. Learn about the historic Mount Wilson Observatory. - March 10, 3 to 9 p.m.--Full Moon Rising View the full Moon through a telescope. See historic photos of the Mount Wilson Observatory and newer photos from the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The Universe began last September and runs through May 2001. Through exhibits, performances, gallery talks and workshops, this celestial exploration reflects the importance of Pasadena as a center for the study of science and art.
The Pasadena cultural institutions actively participating in The Universe are the California Institute of Technology; Armory Center of the Arts; Art Center College of Design; Norton Simon Museum; One Colorado; Pacific Asia Museum; Southwest Chamber Music; and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. For information on space exploration and astronomical objects, see JPL's website at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov . More information about Pasadena's celebration of The Universe is available at http://www.pasadena-universe.org .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology.
VOLCANOES AND AURORAS GLOW IN ECLIPSE MOVIE OF JUPITER'S MOON IO
The first movie ever made of Jupiter's moon Io while it is in eclipse shows bright spots of hot lava and changes in auroral glows. These images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft provide evidence that the auroras originate in electrical currents that connect Io and Jupiter along magnetic-field lines.
Other images being released today by the Cassini imaging team show auroras on the dark side of Jupiter itself, near both of the planet's poles. Jupiter's south pole aurora had never been imaged from the planet's night side before.
The images are available from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter
and from the Cassini imaging science team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, at
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .
Cassini made its closest pass to Jupiter on Dec. 30, 2000, gaining a gravitational boost for reaching its main destination, Saturn, in 2004. It will continue to make observations and measurements of the Jupiter system through March 2001. More information about joint studies of Jupiter by Cassini and NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for more than five years, is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .
Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and Galileo missions for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
February 1, 2001
INSECT-LIKE SPACE STRUCTURE PREVIEWS OUR SUN'S DEATH
A new Hubble Space Telescope image of a celestial object called the Ant Nebula may shed new light on the future demise of our Sun. The image is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/wfpc .
The nebula, imaged on July 20, 1997, and June 30, 1998, by Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, was observed by Drs. Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Bruce Balick of the University of Washington in Seattle; and Vincent Icke of Leiden University in the Netherlands. JPL designed and built the camera.
The Ant Nebula, whose technical name is Mz3, resembles the head and thorax of an ant when observed with ground-based telescopes. The new Hubble image, with 10 times the resolution revealing 100 times more detail, shows the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun- like star. The Ant Nebula is located between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth in the southern constellation Norma.
The image challenges old ideas about what happens to dying stars. This observation, along with other pictures of various remnants of dying stars called planetary nebulae, shows that our Sun's fate will probably be much more interesting, complex and dramatic than astronomers previously believed.
Although the ejection of gas from the dying star in the Ant Nebula is violent, it does not show the chaos one might expect from an ordinary explosion, but instead shows symmetrical patterns. One possibility is that the central star has a closely orbiting companion whose gravitational tidal forces shape the outflowing gas. A second possibility is that as the dying star spins, its strong magnetic fields are wound up into complex shapes like spaghetti in an eggbeater. Electrically charged winds, much like those in our Sun's solar wind but millions of times denser and moving at speeds up to 1,000 kilometers per second (more than 600 miles per second) from the star, follow the twisted field lines on their way out into space.
The Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md., manages space operations for the Hubble Space Telescope for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA under contract with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Additional information about the Hubble Space Telescope is available at http://www.stsci.edu . More information about the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is available at http://wfpc2.jpl.nasa.gov .
January 31, 2001
NEW ERA BEGINS AS MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR COMPLETES PRIME MISSION
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which has collected more information about the red planet than all previous missions combined, completes its primary science mission today and begins a new era of continued exploration. "By any conceivable measure the scientific impact of Mars Global Surveyor has been extraordinary. In many ways we now know Mars to be a different planet than when the spacecraft arrived in 1997, and our perspective continues to evolve as the data keep flowing," said Dr. Arden Albee, Global Surveyor project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "In some aspects, we now have better maps of Mars than we do of Earth." "During the primary science mission, the spacecraft studied the climate, surface topography and subsurface resources and mapped the entire planet," said Tom Thorpe, Global Surveyor project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The extended mission will continue to take advantage of these extraordinary mapping capabilities and the data will be used to select future landing sites for several upcoming missions." Mars Global Surveyor's extended mission has been approved through April 2002. The robotic orbiter was launched on Nov. 7, 1996, and
arrived at Mars on Sept. 12, 1997. The spacecraft began its
primary mapping mission in March 1999 and has collected data for a full Martian year, equivalent to about two Earth years. Those comprehensive observations are proving invaluable to understanding the seasonal changes on Mars. Some of the most significant findings of the mission include: -- Enticing evidence for recent liquid water at the Martian surface. -- Dramatic evidence for layering of rocks that points to widespread ponding of water or lakes on Mars in its early history. -- The first good estimate of the amount of water currently trapped in both Martian polar caps combined -- about one and a half times the amount of ice in Greenland. -- Topographic evidence for a South Pole-to-North Pole slope that controlled the transport of water and sediments, and recognition of the flat Northern Hemisphere that has been proposed as the possible site of an ancient ocean. -- The surprising detection of highly magnetized crust in the Southern Hemisphere, which indicates rapid cooling of Mars in the beginning of its history that may have contributed to its earlier, warmer climate. -- The first reliable models of the crustal structure of Mars, including the detection of ancient impact basins and possible channels buried beneath the northern plains. -- Identification of the mineral hematite, indicating a past surface-hydrothermal environment that may be an analog for the kinds of areas in which early life developed on Earth. -- Significantly improved understanding of the dynamics of the atmosphere, including the monitoring of cyclonic storms, and the daily and seasonal behavior of carbon dioxide and water ice clouds. -- Extensive evidence for the role of dust in re-shaping the recent Martian environment in the form of dust devils, dust storms, dunes and sand sheets. As of 4:33 p.m. PST (7:33 p.m. EST) January 31, 2001, the spacecraft will have made 8,505 orbits of the planet and taken more than 58,000 images, 490 million laser-altimeter shots to measure topography and 97 million spectral measurements. The Global Surveyor mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., developed and operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. Additional information on the mission can be found at: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/
The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE)
What puts the brakes on madly spinning stars?
NASA SELECTS PARTNERS FOR NEW MILLENNIUM
Eight teams from industry, universities and NASA centers have been selected to develop new technology concepts, such as advanced solar power and optical communications, for future NASA missions. NASA plans to select up to five of the concepts for Space Technology 6 (ST6), the next New Millennium Program project, which will flight-test the new technology concepts in 2003 and 2004. The teams, selected by NASA's New Millennium Program, will study the options during a six-month phase for defining the technology concepts. "The program taps into the nation's best industrial and academic technology resources," said Dr. Fuk Li, program manager of the New Millennium Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The program's objective is to validate technologies that are required for future science missions in space, not in a laboratory on Earth. ST6 also is the first time we are validating technology items as stand-alone subsystems. This set of technologies will bring broad benefits to NASA," said Li. Each of the eight teams' selected technologies fall into specific space technology capability areas deemed important by NASA for its future space science missions. The technologies and teams are:
* -- Lightweight High-Voltage Stretched-Lens Concentrator Solar Array Experiment (provided by AEC-Able Engineering Company, Inc., Goleta, Calif.) * -- Dual Reflector Telescope Experiment (provided by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Missile and Space Operations, Palo Alto, Calif.) * -- Ultra-Low Power Serial Bus (provided by Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.) * -- Low-Power Avionics Sensor Suite (provided by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.) * -- Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing for Space-to-Space Interplanetary Optical Communications (provided by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo.) * -- Flight Validation of Autonomous Rendezvous in Low-Earth Orbit (provided by Scientific Systems Company, Inc., Woburn, Mass.) * -- Autonomous Sciencecraft Constellation (provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.) * -- Continuously Operating Helium Dilution Cooler for Space Applications (provided by NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.)
Between February and August 2001, the eight teams will independently demonstrate how their proposed technologies will be ready for flight validation. Each will also be responsible for delivering a study report that will include technology-validation experiment descriptions, rationale for flight validation, data, and partnering relationships. Then an independent review board at NASA will evaluate the reports and select the technology concepts that will fly in ST6. Further information on the New Millennium Program is available at http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov . The New Millennium Program was created in 1994 to identify, develop and flight-validate advanced technologies that can lower costs and enable critical performance of science missions in the 21st century. The program is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Earth Science and Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. BACK TO THE TOP
COMET COLLISIONS: ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVED?
Recurring collisions between comets during the solar system's formation may have ground smaller comets to bits, leaving only big comets larger than 20 kilometers (12 miles) to survive, according to a new model developed by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. The finding, by Dr. Paul Weissman of JPL and Dr. Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute, published in the February 1 issue of the journal Nature, demonstrates that previous models may have significantly overestimated the mass of the Oort cloud -- a region far beyond the planets populated by comets flung outward in the solar system's youth. "We're introducing a new wrinkle in the process of how the Oort cloud formed," said Weissman. One result of the new finding, he said, is that "the cloud may be 10 times less massive than previously thought." By studying comets of different sizes, the scientists predicted how the comets would collide with each other, and how the collisions would erode the comet's cores, dirty snowballs of dust and ice. Their model showed that comets with nucleus diameters smaller than 20 kilometers (12 miles) would have been destroyed in the early solar system's demolition derby. Previous Oort cloud formation models neglected the effects of these collisions. Another apparent implication of this violent collisional environment is that the comets in the Oort cloud could be smaller than previously thought, said the scientists. If comets were so eroded that they would never have left the region of the giant planets, then few of them would have survived to be ejected to the Oort cloud. Taking into account their new findings, Weissman estimates that typical comets in the Oort cloud may be about half as large across as compared with current best estimates.
January 29, 2001
NGC 3603: Chandra Sees Multitude of New Stars in Nearby Star-Forming Region
The cosmic "paintbrush" that creates planetary nebulae, some of the most dazzling
objects in the night sky, may have been found.
Meteorite helps to explain Mars water puzzle
Hot, dry Venus might have once been a wet, cool world like Earth and ancient Mars.
NEAR has passed within 3 kilometers of Eros' surface, as it prepares to descend to the asteroid's surface on February 12.
The first large-scale pictures of the Earth's magnetic force-field are now available, thanks to our IMAGE spacecraft.
Cassini 'sees' invisible doughnut around Jupiter
New from Cassini: Jupiter lightning storms, small moon
January 24, 2001
CASSINI "SEES" INVISIBLE GAS DOUGHNUT AROUND JUPITER
NASA's Cassini spacecraft is helping scientists see the structure and hour-to-hour changes of a giant doughnut-shaped gaseous ring around Jupiter in unprecedented detail.
The doughnut, called the Io torus, draws its raw material from gases spewed into space by volcanoes on Io, one of Juputer's large moons.
The torus was detected in the 1970s, but almost all of its light is invisible to the human eye. It is big enough that if Earth were in the middle, the orbit of Earth's Moon would fit inside the hole of the doughnut.
The first movie clip of the gyrating Io torus in extreme ultraviolet light is available online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/cassini .
"We're visualizing the torus and seeing it evolve and change in a level of detail that people haven't seen before," said Dr. Larry Esposito, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and principal investigator for Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph instrument.
He and University of Colorado's Ian Stewart and other colleagues are examining what the ultraviolet information can add to understanding about the composition and temperature of the torus and the processes that produce it.
The source of specific wavelengths of ultraviolet glow coming from the torus can be identified as positively charged ions of oxygen and sulfur, Esposito said.
Cassini, built, operated and managed by JPL, is monitoring the concentrations, temperatures and distribution of the ions over a six-month period to check and build upon current explanations for the torus. Gases from Io's volcanoes contain oxygen and sulfur. The torus apparently gets its ingredients and shape when some of the neutral oxygen and sulfur atoms around Io become ionized by exposure to radiation from the Sun or from a radiation belt that surrounds Jupiter. As ions, they are stuck to lines of magnetic force in Jupiter's strong magnetic field. That field twirls along with the planet's rotation, dragging the ions in circular paths around Jupiter, so a shape that begins as a sphere around Io becomes a torus around Jupiter.
The ultraviolet instrument on Cassini has checked the Io torus almost daily since Oct. 1, 2000. So far, the monitoring shows a gradual decline in overall brightness. The torus material apparently dissipates and cools over time, to be replenished and re-energized by the next episode of volcanic activity from Io.
"We might be seeing the tail end of one of those episodes," Esposito said. "We're hoping Io will give us a new injection of material so we can track the effects."
Cassini passed its closest to Jupiter on Dec. 30, gaining a gravitational boost needed for reaching its main destination, Saturn. It will continue studying the environment around Jupiter until March 22.
Esposito said he looks forward to investigating clues of a related phenomenon at Saturn involving gases from the dense atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini will reach Saturn in July 2004. Information about the dynamics of the Io torus and its possible cousin at Saturn could deepen understanding of other phenomena linked to magnetic fields, said Espositio. These phenomena include powerful magnetic storms that can disrupt communications on Earth, and the shaping of nascent solar systems called planetary accretion discs that can exist within the magnetic-field influence of newly forming stars.
Cassini is a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Cassini for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Further information about the mission is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini .
January 23, 2001
Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft
Last year NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft spotted mysterious layered regions on Mars. If the layers are sedimentary deposits that formed underwater, as some scientists suspect, they could be the best places to hunt for elusive Martian fossils.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast23jan_1.htm?list448368
NEW FROM CASSINI: JUPITER LIGHTNING STORMS, SMALL MOON
A new batch of Jupiter images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft demonstrates some of the ways scientists are using Cassini's camera to learn more than what first meets the eye, such as determining particle sizes in clouds and identifying which storms produce lightning. One new picture is the best yet taken of the small moon Himalia, and is the first ever to show one of Jupiter's outer moons as more than a star-like dot.
One pair of frames shows the same portion of the planet both in daylight then after it had rotated to the night side, showing that only certain small areas were producing lightning.
and from the Cassini Imaging Science team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, at
January 19, 2000
LIVE WEBCAST TO PRESENT SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF JUPITER
During a live webcast on Monday, Jan. 22, scientists from California, Iowa and Colorado will discuss some of the Jupiter images and other information they have received recently from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
The two-hour Internet event from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will begin at 8:30 a.m. PST (11:30 a.m. EST) at
http://www.liveonthenet.com/show.cgi?/2001/nasa/show103 .
Dr. Andrew Ingersoll, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, will discuss studies of Jupiter's atmosphere, including movie clips of swirling storms imaged by Cassini. Dr. William Kurth, a physicist for the University of Iowa, Iowa City, will present information about studies of natural radio waves near Jupiter and what they reveal about the giant magnetic field surrounding the planet. Some of the radio waves will be presented as audio clips. Dr. Larry Esposito, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will show some initial results of using an ultraviolet imaging instrument on Cassini to "see" a doughnut-shaped ring around Jupiter fed by volcanic gases from the moon Io.
Tuning in requires free pre-registration with LiveOnTheNet at http://www.liveonthenet.com . Questions for the panel may be submitted to webcast@jpl.nasa.gov . Additional information about the webcast is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .
Cassini is a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The spacecraft passed Jupiter three weeks ago en route to its main destination, Saturn. Through March, it will continue a collaborative study of Jupiter with Galileo, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages Galileo and Cassini for the NASA Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
January 19, 2001
CASSINI SCIENTISTS SEE NO SIGN OF LIGHTNING ON VENUS
A search for lighting on Venus in 1998 and 1999 using NASA's Cassini spacecraft failed to detect high-frequency radio waves commonly associated with lighting, says physicist Donald Gurnett of the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
The possible existence of lightning at Venus has long been controversial. Gurnett and seven co-authors report their negative findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
"If lightning exists in the Venusian atmosphere, it is either extremely rare, or very different from terrestrial lightning," Gurnett says. "If terrestrial-like lightning were occurring in the atmosphere of Venus within the region viewed by Cassini, it would have been easily detectable."
The Cassini spacecraft, built, operated and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., made its closest approach to Jupiter on Dec. 30 and is scheduled to arrive at Saturn in July 2004. Cassini made two gravity-assisted flybys of Venus, the first on April 26, 1998, and the second on June 24, 1999. During the flybys the radio and plasma wave science instrument, with its three, 30-foot-long antennas, searched for impulsive high-frequency (0.125 to 16 megahertz) radio signals.
Gurnett, who is the principal investigator on the instrument, says that these signals, called "spherics," are always produced by lightning on Earth and are commonly heard as static on AM radios during thunderstorms. As a test of the instrument's ability to detect Earth-generated lightning, a search was conducted for spherics when Cassini made a close flyby of the Earth on August 18, 1999. Not surprisingly, the instrument detected lightning continuously at rates up to 70 impulses per second.
Despite the Cassini results, Gurnett cannot rule out the possibility that some type of low-frequency electrical activity may yet exist at Venus because radio signals cannot penetrate the ionosphere at frequencies below about 1 megahertz. Therefore, no definitive statement can be made about the lightning spectrum at those frequencies
"Since the atmosphere of Venus is very different from that of Earth, it is perhaps not surprising that electrical activity on Venus might be very different from lightning in the Earth's atmosphere," says Gurnett, who notes that lightning generally can be divided into two types, cloud-to-ground and the weaker cloud- to-cloud variety. "Because clouds over Venus are at very high altitudes of 40 kilometers (25 miles) or more, it is likely that lightning at Venus, if it exists, is primarily cloud-to-cloud. Terrestrial cloud-to-ground lightning is generally more intense than cloud-to-cloud so it is possible that the absence of impulsive high-frequency radio signals during the Venus flybys could be owing to the dominance of very weak cloud-to-cloud lightning at Venus."
Gurnett says that electrical activity at Venus could also be cloud-to-ionosphere discharges. "At the Earth, there is a type of electrical discharge called a "sprite" that travels up from a cloud to the ionosphere. A sprite is not like lightning as we usually think of it," Gurnett says. "Sprites have a slow electrical discharge, meaning that they also have a low frequency and are very difficult to detect."
Serious discussions over whether lightning exists at Venus began in 1978 when Venera, Russia's Venus lander, found low- frequency signals that some scientists called lightning, but others doubted for a variety of reasons. Later, physicist William Taylor, a former University of Iowa student of Gurnett's, in 1979 found what he considered to be evidence for lightning using the NASA Pioneer Venus spacecraft. In 1990, using a Galileo spacecraft instrument similar to the one he designed for Cassini, Gurnett detected several small impulses that were interpreted at the time as being indicative of lightning. However, Galileo was some 60 times more distant from Venus than was Cassini, making the results much less significant than those of Cassini.
Meanwhile, the Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, is continuing its journey to Saturn, where it is scheduled to begin a four-year exploration of Saturn, its rings, atmosphere and moons on July 1, 2004. Gurnett and an international team of some18 co-investigators will use the radio and plasma wave science instrument to measure Saturn's powerful radio emissions, as well as its lightning discharges.
Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, manages Cassini for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Further information about the mission is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini .
January 17, 2001
WINTER SNOWFALL TURNS AN EMERALD WHITE
Lush green gives way to dazzling white in these two images of Ireland from NASA's Multi-angle SpectroRadiometer. The summer view shows the verdant landscape for which Ireland is famous, while the other, taken after a record-breaking winter storm, reveals the Emerald Isle with an unusual coating of snow. The images are available online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/misr MISR, built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is one of several Earth-observing experiments aboard Terra, which was launched in December 1999. MISR acquires images of the Earth at nine angles simultaneously, using nine separate cameras pointed forward, downward, and backward along its flight path. More information about MISR is available at:
http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov
January 16, 2001
COMET MISSION ENVISIONED THROUGH THE EYES OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
With a dash of paint here and a blast of color there, a blank
canvas was brought to life by two space-inspired high school students
responding to an art assignment.
Answering the call of their art teachers to paint something that
inspired them, Rebekah Sorensen and Sarah McCready, 10th graders from
Meadow Creek Christian School, Anoka, Minn., created a 5-by-8-foot
mural depicting NASA's Stardust mission, the first space mission to
collect dust from a comet's tail.
"I think it's very exciting that Stardust could inspire something
so beautiful," said Aimee Whalen, educational and public outreach
manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. "When I saw it I was so impressed!"
The students' masterpiece, created with acrylic paint, currently
hangs on display at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The mural,
divided into three sections -- Stardust's launch, its encounter with
Comet Wild 2 and the spacecraft's rendezvous with Earth and release of
the sample capsule in 2006 -- will be moved to JPL at the end of March,
where it will hang for approximately three months. The laboratory then
plans to rotate it yearly to various museums, said Whalen.
The students' work of art was also part of an exhibit display for
the JASON Project 2000, one of Stardust's educational partner programs.
It hung on display for three months at the Bell Museum of Natural
History at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
"The students and I thought it was such a privilege to have the
mural hang at the University of Minnesota," said Dee McLellan, math and
computer teacher and JPL Solar System Educator. "But when the Stardust
Project Office at JPL was interested in displaying it, they just
thought 'Wow!'"
Both students received $1,000 from JPL for their work. According
to Whalen, the girls plan to put the money towards their college education.
Sarah is looking into combining the fields of science and art in the
future. "I hope that some of what we do here has helped to inspire her
dream," said Whalen.
Stardust, launched in February 1999, just received a gravity boost
on Jan. 15, as it made its closest approach to Earth at just over 6,000
kilometers (3,700 miles) above the southeastern coast of Africa. On
Jan. 2, 2004, nearly 390 million kilometers (242 million miles) from Earth,
it will encounter its final destination -- Comet Wild 2. The mission is
managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. For more
information and images of Stardust go to http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
Astronomers are using Hubble ultraviolet images of nearby galaxies to help tackle the question
of why their distant relatives have such odd shapes. Hubble's Ultraviolet Views of Nearby Galaxies Yield Clues to Early Universe
January 11, 2001
GALLERY OF SANTA BARBARA AREA SPACE IMAGES AVAILABLE ONLINE
Two new images of the Santa Barbara area from NASA's Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission highlight the region's spectacular scenery. One view
looks northeast along the coast from the Goleta Valley in the foreground
to snow-capped Mount Abel, an area sometimes called "America's Riviera."
The other image shows the Cuyama River winding down the Cuyama Valley
at the foot of the Caliente Range.
They are available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/srtm
These two new images along with five other recently released images
showing some of California's dramatic topography from the Carrizo Plain
in the north to Ventura in the south are collected on a new clickable
map available online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/california_clickmap1.html
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which flew onboard Space
Shuttle Endeavour last February, gathered topographic elevation data
over approximately 80 percent of Earth's land mass during its 10-day
flight. The results of the mission will be the most extensive
high-resolution database of Earth's topography.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a division of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
STARDUST CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW -- JUST BEFORE EARTH FLYBY
After a few months of foggy camera vision, NASA's
Stardust mission team has improved the spacecraft's
navigation-camera resolution to nearly normal, just as
Stardust is preparing to make a close flyby of the Earth on
Monday.
By heating the camera's optical path, the Stardust
team was able to help its nearsighted spacecraft boil away
contaminants that had been deposited on optical surfaces.
One year ago, the imaging team took pictures of a
small lamp inside the optical path of the camera. The
camera will be used to navigate Stardust to its 2004
encounter with Comet Wild 2 (pronounced "vilt-2"). Apparent
contamination of the navigation-camera prevented a clear
test-image of the squiggly line of the lamp's filament, and
the lens seemed to be covered with a veil of light-
scattering material that produced a blurry image.
The team concluded that the contamination might have
been released with gases escaping from the spacecraft after
its launch, and that heating the optical path of the camera
might evaporate the contaminant covering the camera lens.
After a series of heating cycles, they re-tested the camera
by taking more pictures of the lamp.
Pictures taken after the heating revealed that the
zigzag line of the lamp's filament was visible again.
Images of stars taken by the camera are also clearer. The
team estimates the camera can now photograph stars two
magnitudes (celestial degrees of brightness) better. The
navigation camera has detected stars as faint as 9th
magnitude in brightness, which should allow the spacecraft
to perform its final navigation maneuvers during approach
to the comet nearly at the time originally planned.
Now Stardust, on its journey to collect comet dust, is
getting ready to springboard from Earth -- in a maneuver
called a "gravity-assist" -- when the spacecraft passes
closest to Earth on January 15, 2001. The Earth will not
be in the navigation camera's field-of-view during the
flyby, so no images of Earth will be taken.
Stardust was launched on February 7, 1999, into its
first loop around the Sun. When Stardust passes by Earth at
about 10 kilometers per second (22,400 miles per hour), it
will go into a slightly wider orbit that will allow it to
reach the comet on January 2, 2004.
On Monday, January 15, Stardust will fly by a point
just southeast of the southern tip of Africa, slightly more
than 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) from the surface at
about 3:15 a.m. PST (5:15 a.m. EST).
Stardust may be visible to observers using
sophisticated telescopes with charge-coupled device (CCD)
detectors from the Pacific Ocean and the Western United
States just after the spacecraft flies by Earth. Stardust
will not be visible using binoculars.
A gravity-assist works like this: when a spacecraft
closely approaches a planet, the planet's gravitational
pull accelerates the spacecraft and bends the flight path.
Mission designers account for this extra pull and use it to
their advantage to boost spacecraft speed and direct
interplanetary spacecraft to their targets. Like a windup
before the pitch, the Earth gravity-assist will sling
Stardust into the right path to meet Comet Wild 2.
About 15 hours after its closest approach to Earth,
the spacecraft will pass about 98,000 kilometers (61,000
miles) from the Moon. Because of the greater distance, the
Moon's gravity will have essentially no influence on the
spacecraft's flight path.
Stardust, a part of NASA's Discovery Program of low-
cost, highly focused science missions, is managed by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. for NASA's
Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division
of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. More
information on the Stardust mission is available at
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
January 10, 2001
STARDUST PREPARES TO PICK UP SPEED FROM EARTH'S GRAVITY ASSIST
As it completes the first of three laps of about a
billion miles each around the heart of the solar system,
NASA's Stardust spacecraft is getting ready for a pit stop of
sorts, flying by Earth in mid-January for a gravitational
speed boost. The added energy will put Stardust on course to
meet Comet Wild 2 (pronounced "vilt-2") in January 2004.
"It's a big event in the sense that it's a mission
milestone," said Dr. Donald Brownlee, a University of
Washington astronomy professor and the mission's principal
investigator. "We don't have to do anything during the flyby.
It's all celestial mechanics."
The Earth-gravity-assist phase of the mission actually
began on Nov. 14, as the desk-sized craft cruised toward Earth
after traveling beyond the orbit of Mars. Engineers at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have made
course changes and other adjustments to ensure that Stardust
gains the proper amount of energy from Earth's gravity.
The gravity boost will lengthen the spacecraft's orbit,
setting up its rendezvous with Wild 2 in early 2004. Stardust
will capture particles being boiled off the comet's surface by
solar heating. During the gravity-assist phase, the closest
Earth approach will be at 3:20 a.m. PST on Jan. 15, as the
spacecraft flies just southeast of the southern tip of Africa.
It will be traveling about 5,950 kilometers (3,700 miles) from
the Earth's surface and moving at about 36,050 kilometers per
hour (22,400 miles per hour).
"The science of the mission is basically ahead of us,"
Brownlee said. "We've dealt with a number of problems, but
they have been fewer than most spacecraft experience."
Perhaps the most heart-stopping problem came last Nov. 9-
10, when Stardust was bombarded by photons from a solar flare
some 100,000 times larger than normal. The energy overwhelmed
the navigation camera, which is used to help pilot Stardust by
focusing on stars and planets and then comparing that image
with a star map in its memory. Normally the camera sees only a
few stars at a time, but in this case its electronic imaging
chip interpreted the solar flare's photon flashes as thousands
of stars. The spacecraft went into safe mode, with its solar
panels pointed toward the sun. Eventually the photon flashes
faded and ground controllers were able to reset the star
camera.
There also has been some intriguing science. The Cometary
and Interstellar Dust Analyzer, operated by Germany's Max-
Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, came up with an
unexpected analysis of interstellar particles the spacecraft
encountered.
"The surprise is that they were high-molecular-weight
materials, probably large organic molecules," Brownlee said.
"It would be something analogous to tar or coal."
Stardust was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb.
7, 1999, and this is its first return to its home planet. The
next encounter with Earth comes in January 2006, when the
return capsule will separate from the spacecraft and parachute
into the Utah desert. The capsule will carry comet material
and interstellar dust particles, captured in a wispy material
called aerogel. The particles will be sent to laboratories
around the world for analysis. It is expected the samples will
yield clues to the origins of the solar system and possibly
life itself.
The spacecraft's encounter with the comet will occur just
outside the orbit of Mars, 242 million miles from Earth. There
is a possibility that Stardust may be visible from the west
coast of the United States and the Pacific Ocean just after
the flyby, for observers using sophisticated telescopes with
CCD detectors.
Mission collaborators are the NASA, JPL, the University
of Washington, and Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver.
Other key team members include The Boeing Co., The Max-Planck-
Institut, NASA Ames Research Center and the University of
Chicago. The Stardust mission is managed by JPL for NASA's
Office of Space Science. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
For more information on the mission, see
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
Jan. 5, 2001
MARS 2001 ODYSSEY SPACECRAFT ARRIVES FOR LAUNCH PREPARATION
The first major step toward NASA's return of a spacecraft to
an orbit around Mars was achieved late Thursday night, Jan. 4,
when the Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space
Center in Florida. The spacecraft was shipped aboard an Air
Force C-17 cargo airplane from Denver, Colo., location of the
Lockheed Martin plant where the spacecraft was built. The
project is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif.
Mars Odyssey was moved on a transport trailer from the
Shuttle Landing Facility to the Kennedy Space Center's Spacecraft
Assembly and Encapsulation Facility 2, where it will undergo
final assembly and checkout. This includes installation of two
of the three science instruments, integration of the three-panel
solar array, and a spacecraft functional test. It will be fueled
and then mated to an upper stage booster, the final activities
before going to the launch pad.
Launch is planned for April 7, the first day of a 21-day
launch opportunity. Mars Odyssey will be inserted into an
interplanetary trajectory by a Boeing Delta II launch vehicle
from Pad A at Complex 17. The spacecraft will arrive at Mars on
Oct. 20, 2001, for insertion into an initial elliptical capture
orbit. Its final operational altitude at Mars will be a 400
kilometer-high (250 mile-) Sun-synchronous polar orbit. Mars
Odyssey will conduct a two-year mission in Mars orbit mapping the
planet's surface and measuring its environment.
"Ultimately, the spacecraft could contribute significantly
toward understanding what may be necessary for a more
sophisticated exploration of Mars, and perhaps an eventual human
visit," said Mars Odyssey Project Manger George Pace of JPL.
The program management of the Mars Odyssey mission is by the
Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
The launch is managed by NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
January 5, 2001
NUMERO UNO IN SPACE: NASA UNVEILS WEB SITE IN SPANISH
Spanish-speaking space fans can hitch a ride via the
Internet on an orbiting space observatory, thanks to the
first-ever Spanish-language web site tied to a NASA mission.
The newly unveiled web site for NASA's Space Infrared
Telescope Facility (SIRTF) can be accessed from the main SIRTF
homepage at http://sirtf.caltech.edu. It delivers in Spanish
the latest news about the SIRTF mission, its scientific
background, an infrared astronomy tutorial, and other
educational activities. The mission, launching in 2002, will
study the early universe and hunt for planet-forming regions
around nearby stars.
The new web site will be updated monthly, with more
frequent updates planned closer to launch. Visitors to the
site will be able to submit questions and receive answers in
Spanish. Additional NASA Spanish-language web sites are
anticipated in the near future.
"The Spanish-language Internet user population is growing
very fast, and it will be a really great chance to reach
people with this web site," said Marisa Eisenberg, who
initially created the new Spanish-language site. "This is an
opportunity to help open that community to science, astronomy
and space exploration."
Eisenberg, a 20-year-old UCLA student majoring in
cybernetics -- a mix of computer science, medicine and
robotics -- was born in Houston, Tex., and grew up in
Glendale, Calif., where her mother was a bilingual teacher.
Although Eisenberg learned to speak fluent Spanish at home,
she picked up new scientific terms as a student intern for
SIRTF at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in
Pasadena, operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the
California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena.
"I think the web site reaches beyond the Latino community
for a larger population of Spanish-speaking individuals," said
Dr. Albert Noriega, a scientist with SIRTF. "Those in the
United States will benefit immediately from this web site, but
it should benefit Spanish speakers all over the world."
SIRTF is the fourth and final mission under NASA's Great
Observatories Program, which includes the Hubble Space
Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra
Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility. SIRTF is also the first
new mission of NASA's Origins Program, which will study the
formation of galaxies, stars, planets and life and seek to
answer the questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone?
JPL manages SIRTF for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology.
FREE LECTURES WILL DESCRIBE NASA'S DOUBLE-TEAMING OF JUPITER NASA is taking advantage of having two spacecraft near Jupiter to examine that planet and its surroundings in ways neither spacecraft could do alone, and one of the scientists who organized the campaign will describe it during free public lectures in Pasadena this month. The lectures will be held on the evenings of March 22 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and March 23 at Pasadena City College. JPL's Dr. Duane Bindschadler, chief of the spacecraft and sequence team for NASA's Galileo mission, will explain what the Galileo and Cassini spacecraft have been studying together during the past six months. He will describe recent findings and lingering questions about Jupiter's colorful atmosphere, diverse moons, faint rings and powerful magnetic field. The moons include Io, where mighty volcanoes rapidly repaint the surface, and Europa, where Galileo has found strong evidence for an ocean of saltwater under an icy crust. Galileo is in its sixth year of what was originally planned as a two-year mission in orbit around Jupiter. It is currently transmitting data collected during the joint campaign with Cassini. Cassini flew near Jupiter for a gravitational boost to reach Saturn. It passed closest to Jupiter in December and took dramatic images of Jupiter's swirling storms and other jovian wonders. Before coming to JPL in 1995, Bindschadler taught and conducted research in geophysics at the University of California, Los Angeles. A Wyoming native, he earned a bachelor's degree in physics at Washington University in St. Louis and a doctorate in geology from Brown University in Providence, R.I. "I enjoy trying to give people a sense of what space exploration is showing us about the amazing things that go on in the universe around us," he said. His lectures, "Galileo Millennium Mission: The Latest Results," will begin at 7 p.m. Parking and admission are free. Seating is first-come, first-served. Thursday's lecture at JPL will be in von Karman Auditorium, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena. Friday's Pasadena City College lecture will be in Voslow Forum, 1570 E. Colorado Blvd. More information on the von Karman lecture series can be obtained at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lecture or by calling (818) 354-0112. For directions to JPL, see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/tours/routes.html . JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
National Institutes of Health NASA Astrobiology Institute Joint Symposium Website
National Institute of Child Health and Development April 2, 2001 National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, 10 Center Drive, Bldg 10, Jack Masur Auditorium. Bethesda, MD. Registration open to all interested..
2001 von Karman Lecture Series Schedule JPL/NASA
By: John Mosley-GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY
The nicest planetary grouping for the rest of 2001 occurs during prime time this Thursday evening, March 1. The crescent moon sits almost midway between Jupiter and Saturn while brilliant Venus shines below. Look in the west from about 6 p.m. until shortly after 8 p.m. Jupiter and Saturn are 8 degrees apart this month, closer than they will be until 2020. A graphic of the event is posted at:
http://www.GriffithObs.org/skyreport.html.
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FRIENDS OF THE OBSERVATORY With THE SPACE FRONTIER FOUNDATION Present ASTEROIDS: THE THREAT AND THE PROMISE By Dr. Paul Chodas and Kenneth Lawrence Monday, March 5, 2001 7:30 p.m. At GRIFFITH OBSERVATORY
Speakers Dr. Paul Chodas and Ken Lawrence, both from JPL's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) team, and Rick Tumlinson, President of the Space Frontier Foundation will discuss efforts being carried out to locate and track Near Earth Objects, (NEO's) that are both a threat to and a promise for Earth as unlimited opportunities for exploration and utilization.
"Our Earth has been struck many times by large objects that have influenced the development of life on Earth, and human history," states Rick Tumlinson, president of the Space Frontier Foundation. "Its been said that the dinosaurs are extinct because they never developed a space program. We're determined that Humankind will avoid the dinosaurs' fate."
Dr. Paul W. Chodas is responsible for calculating orbits for asteroids and comets to determine if they intersect Earth's orbit and pose a threat. "The Earth is constantly being bombarded by asteroids, and is struck by an asteroid of about 100 meters in diameter every 100 years or so." Dr. Chodas states, "These aren't big enough to end civilization, but they'll do as much damage as a 20 megaton nuclear warhead."
Kenneth J. Lawrence has discovered and co-discovered hundreds of asteroids of all classes. He has been a member of the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey, the Stardust Project. He received the 1997 and 2000 JPL and NASA's Group Achievement Award for his work on the NEAT team and the Stardust Project.
Following the presentation is the official unveiling of the Observatory's new exhibit of 3D asteroid models. Observatory artist Robert Kline sculpted detailed scale models of the asteroids for which we have photographic documentation: Eros, Gaspra, Ida and its satellite Dactyl, Mathilda, and Toutatis. There is also a model of the large asteroid Vesta, which is based on conjecture, and which is accompanied by chips of Vesta which fell to earth as meteorites.
Artist Robert Kline will be present to discuss his techniques in modeling asteroids.
The Space Frontier Foundation is an organization of people dedicated to opening the space frontier to human settlement as rapidly as possible. To help protect the Earth from impacts, and grow an awareness of this potential threat and promise, the Space Frontier Foundation created The Watch. The Watch is dedicated to assisting astronomers world-wide in locating, identifying, and tracking NEO's. For information on the foundation, call 1-800- 78SPACE,and visit our website at http://www.space-frontier.org
Admission: $2 for FOTO members, $5 for non-members, tickets available at the door. For more information call FOTO at (818) 846-3686,or Griffith Observatory at (323) 664-1181. Please allow adequate time for parking. (Children under 5 are not admitted)