NASA C-20A Completes Radar Study of Pacific Rim Volcanoes

 

NASA's modified Airborne Science C-20A is seen on the parking ramp at Yokota Air Force Base near Tokyo, Japan. The aircraft, carrying the UAVSAR mounted in an undercarriage pod, was deployed to conduct a radar imaging mission of Japan's active volcanoes.

NASA's Airborne Science C-20A aircraft, carrying a specialized synthetic aperture radar, recently completed a mission to study active volcanoes in Alaska, Aleutian Islands and Japan in early October.

The aircraft, a modified version of the Gulfstream III business jet, made 10 flights totaling more than 50 hours during the eight-day campaign. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), developed and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, collected 60 of 61 planned data lines.

NASA's NASA's Airborne Science C-20A made a refueling stop at Eareckson Air Station on Shemya Island, Alaska, during a mission to image volcanoes in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The aircraft crew and mission scientists, led by NASA Dryden C-20A project manager John McGrath (kneeling at left), paused for a group photo by the air station sign before boarding the aircraft and continuing onto Japan for UAVSAR imaging of active volcanoes. (NASA / John McGrath)UAVSAR provides a measurement system that complements satellite-based observations by providing rapid revisits and imaging of active volcanoes to better understand their deformation prior to, during or after an eruption.

The flight path took the aircraft north from California, imaging the volcanoes of the Western United States, en route to an overnight stay at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska.

After departing Elmendorf, the NASA aircraft imaged volcanoes in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands before arriving at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, Japan. Yokota was the staging location for science missions that collected data about volcanoes on several islands in Japan that pose a hazard to nearby populations.

Working closely with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), three volcano-imaging flights were flown from Yokota over various volcano and disaster monitoring sites throughout Japan between Oct. 5 and 8. The aircraft repeated the outbound routing during the return flights to its home base at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif.

John McGrath, C-20A project manager at NASA Dryden, said a mission of this complexity faced numerous challenges.

"Preparation has been ongoing since May," McGrath commented. "We had tremendous support from both Elmendorf and Yokota air bases and our colleagues at JAXA."

Scientists discover the source of water on Moon

The findings by researchers from the University of Michigan imply that ice inside permanently shadowed polar craters on the Moon could contain hydrogen atoms ultimately derived from the solar wind.

WASHINGTON: Scientists have discovered that the most likely source of water on Moon is the constant stream of charged particles from the Sun known as the solar wind.

The findings by researchers from the University of Michigan imply that ice inside permanently shadowed polar craters on the Moon, sometimes called cold traps, could contain hydrogen atoms ultimately derived from the solar wind.

Theoretical models of lunar water stability dating to the late 1970s suggest that hydrogen ions (protons) from the solar wind can combine with oxygen on the Moon's surface to form water and related compounds called hydroxyls, which consist of one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen and are known as OH.

Researchers present infrared spectroscopy and mass spectrometry analyses of Apollo samples that reveal the presence of significant amounts of hydroxyl inside glasses formed in the lunar regolith by micrometeorite impacts.

"We found that the 'water' component, the hydroxyl, in the lunar regolith is mostly from solar wind implantation of protons, which locally combined with oxygen to form hydroxyls that moved into the interior of glasses by impact melting," said Youxue Zhang, Professor of Geological Sciences.

"Our work shows that the 'water' component, the hydroxyl, is widespread in lunar materials, although not in the form of ice or liquid water that can easily be used in a future manned lunar base," Zhang said in a statement.

"This also means that water likely exists on Mercury and on asteroids such as Vesta or Eros further within our solar system," Yang Liu of U-T, the first author of the paper said.

"These planetary bodies have very different environments, but all have the potential to produce water," she said. Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-held belief that the moon is bone-dry.

In 2009, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing satellite slammed into a permanently shadowed lunar crater and ejected a plume of material that was surprisingly rich in water ice.

Water and related compounds have also been detected in the lunar regolith, the layer of fine powder and rock fragments that coats the lunar surface.

However, the origin of lunar surface water has remained unclear.

The study findings are published in the journal 'Nature Geoscience'.

X-ray Satellites Monitor the Clashing Winds of a Colossal Binary

 

Artist's rendering of a colliding wind binary.

The hottest and most massive stars don't live long enough to disperse throughout the galaxy. Instead, they can be found near the clouds of gas and dust where they formed -- and where they will explode as supernovae after a few million years. They huddle in tight clusters with other young stars or in looser groupings called OB associations, a name reflecting their impressive populations of rare O- and B-type stars.

One of the nearest and richest OB associations in our galaxy is Cygnus OB2, which is located about 4,700 light-years away and hosts some 3,000 hot stars, including about 100 in the O class. Weighing in at more than a dozen times the sun's mass and sporting surface temperatures five to 10 times hotter, these ginormous blue-white stars blast their surroundings with intense ultraviolet light and powerful outflows called stellar winds.

Two of these stars can be found in the intriguing binary system known as Cygnus OB2 #9. In 2011, NASA's Swift satellite, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and several ground-based facilities took part in a campaign to monitor the system as the giant stars raced toward their closest approach.

Now, a paper published in the October issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics provides the campaign's first results and gives a more detailed picture of the stars, their orbits and the interaction of their stellar winds.

An O-type star is so luminous that the pressure of its starlight actually drives material from its surface, creating particle outflows with speeds of several million miles an hour. Put two of these humongous stars in the same system and their winds can collide during all or part of the orbit, creating both radio emission and X-rays.

In 2008, research showed that Cygnus OB2 #9 emitted radio signals that varied every 2.355 years. In parallel, Yael Nazé, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium, detected for the first time a signature in the system's optical spectrum that indicated the presence of two stars. The binary nature of Cygnus OB2 #9 provided a natural explanation for the periodic radio changes.
To maximize their chances of catching X-rays from colliding winds, the researchers needed to monitor the system as the stars raced toward their closest approach, or periastron.
"Our first opportunity came in 2009, but we couldn't perform all of the necessary observations because the sun was in the same part of the sky," Nazé explained. "That meant waiting for the next close approach, on June 28, 2011."

NASA's Swift made five sets of X-ray observations during the 10 months around the date of periastron, and XMM-Newton carried out one high-resolution observation near the predicted time of closest approach. In addition, the Expanded Very Large Array in New Mexico monitored radio emissions, and observations to better refine the orbit were made by the CHARA optical and infrared telescope array on Mount Wilson in California, the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, and the Haute-Provence Observatory in France.

The new data indicate that Cygnus OB2 #9 is a massive binary with components of similar mass and luminosity following long, highly eccentric orbits. The most massive star in the system has about 50 times the sun's mass, and its companion is slightly smaller, with about 45 solar masses. At periastron, these stellar titans are separated by less than three times Earth's average distance from the sun.

Two sets of measurements taken 5.5 days apart near the time of periastron -- one in late June by XMM-Newton and one in early July by Swift -- show that the X-ray flux increased by four times when the stars were closest together. This is compelling evidence for the interaction of fierce stellar winds.

Most massive star binaries lack this feature, and the few that exhibit it tend to show more complex behavior. For example, the wind-wind collision zone may crash onto one of the stars. But in Cygnus OB2 #9, this region remains the same throughout the stars' orbits, a fact that will help astronomers unravel the various physical processes at work.

Massive stars dramatically shape their environment when they explode as supernovae, but their powerful winds dominate the space around them for millions of years, altering star-formation regions throughout their energy-producing lives.

"There is much we don't know on how stars form and how galaxies evolve, and Cygnus OB2 #9 gives important new data on the role played by stellar winds from massive stars," said Neil Gehrels, the principal investigator for Swift.

Meteorite that fell to Earth last year reveals secrets of Mars

Washington: A fresh Martian meteorite that landed in the Moroccan desert 14 months ago bears traces of the planet’s unique atmosphere, researchers have revealed.

The Tissint meteorite is providing more information about the red planet.

"Our team matched traces of gases found inside the Tissint meteorite with samples of Mars'' atmosphere collected in 1976 by Viking, NASA''s Mars lander mission," said University of Alberta researcher Chris Herd, who helped in the study of the meteorite.

Herd explained that 600 million years ago the meteorite started out as a fairly typical volcanic rock on the surface of Mars when it was launched off the planet by the impact of an asteroid.

"At the instant of that impact with Mars, a shock wave shot through the rock. Cracks and fissures within the rock were sealed instantly by the heat, trapping components of Mars'' atmosphere inside, and forming black, glassy spots," said Herd.

The team estimates that for a period between 700,000 and one million years the rock floated through outer space until July, 2011 when it streaked through Earth''s atmosphere landing in Morocco.

This is only the fifth time a Martian meteorite landing was witnessed.

Herd said that the fact that it was picked up just a few months after landing and was not subjected to weathering or contamination on this planet is the key reason why this meteorite is so important.

The Martian weathering involved water, which means water was present on the surface of Mars within the past few hundred million years.

But this meteorite sample, Herd said, does not carry any evidence the water supported any life forms.

"Because the Martian rock was subject to such intense heat any water borne microbial life forms that may have existed deep within cracks of the rock would have been destroyed," said Herd.

Nasa's Mars rover finds rock with Earth-like chemistry

 

CAPE CANAVERAL: When scientists selected a rock to test the Mars rover Curiosity's laser, they expected it to contain the same minerals as rocks found elsewhere on the Red Planet, but learned instead it was more similar to a rock found on Earth.
The rock was chemically more akin to an unusual type of rock found on oceanic islands like Hawaii and St. Helena, as well as in continental rift zones like the Rio Grande, which extends from Colorado to Chihuahua, Mexico.
"It was a bit of a surprise, what we found with this rock," Curiosity scientist Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, told reporters on a conference call on Thursday.
"It's igneous," Gellert said, referring to rock formed from molten material. "But it seems to be a new kind of rock type that we encountered on Mars."
Curiosity arrived on Mars two months ago to learn if the most Earth-like planet in the solar system was suitable for microbial life.
Last month, Curiosity's laser was used to zap the football-sized rock and the rover analyzed the pulverized material, as well as tiny pits left behind, to determine its chemical composition.
Scientists found the rock lacks magnesium and iron - elements found in igneous rock examined by previous Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
The rock, named after a Jet Propulsion Laboratory rover engineer, Jake Matijevic, who died shortly after Curiosity's landing, was also rich in feldspar-like minerals, which provided clues about the rock's history.
"The way in which this type of rock forms ... is like how applejack liquor was made," geologist Edward Stolper, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told reporters.
In colonial times, hard apple cider was put into big barrels and in the winter the liquid would partly freeze. "You'd crystallize out ice and you'd make more and more and more concentrated apple-flavored liquor," Stolper said.
Magma inside a planet can undergo a similar process.
"You melt the interior and it comes to the surface and, just like the applejack, when you cool it, it crystallizes," Stolper said, adding that it takes very particular conditions on Earth to produce this type of magma.
The rover meanwhile has moved on to testing and cleaning of its soil scoop. Eventually, scientists want to funnel soil samples to Curiosity's onboard laboratory for more extensive chemical analysis.
The rover is part way to its first science target, an area known as Glenelg, which has three different types of rock intersecting.
The car-sized Curiosity rover landed inside a giant impact basin called Gale Crater, located near the Martian equator, for a two-year, $2.5 billion astrobiology mission, Nasa's first since the 1970s-era Viking probes.

Tomato can cut risk of stroke by 50%: Study

 

LONDON: Eating tomato and tomato-based food rich in antioxidant lycopene can halve the risk of stroke, a research has said.

Finland researchers found that people with the highest amounts of lycopene in their blood were 55% less likely to have a stroke than people with lowest amounts of lycopene in their blood. The study involved 1,031 men between the ages of 46 and 65.

The level of lycopene in their blood was tested at the start of the study and they were followed for 12 years. During that time, 67 men had a stroke. Among the men with the lowest levels of lycopene, 25 of 258 men had a stroke.

Among those with the highest levels of lycopene, 11 of 259 men had a stroke. When researchers looked at just strokes due to blood clots, the results were even stronger. Those with the highest levels of lycopene were 59% less likely to have a stroke than those with the lowest levels.

Satellite Sees Giant 'Fog Ring' in U.S. Southwest

When you think of fog, you think of a blanket, but NOAA's GOES-14 satellite saw a ring of fog over the southwestern U.S. on Oct. 4.

Fog is water that has condensed close to ground level, producing a cloud of very small droplets that reduces visibility to less than one kilometer (three thousand and three hundred feet), according to the National Weather Service.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-14) captured an image of a giant circle of fog near the Texas Panhandle on Oct. 4 at 1430 UTC (9:30 a.m. CDT). "Morning fog surrounded the great mesa in northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico known as the ' "Llano Estacado," which is one of the largest mesas on the North American continent, and about the size of Indiana," said Dennis Chesters of the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

NASA to Upgrade Vital Communications Link

 

TDRS-K in the Boeing satellite factory undergoing a fit check.



Artist rendition of TDRS-K deployed.


Technicians and engineers are completing final system checks and spacecraft inspections on the first of NASA's third-generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS). Boeing Space Systems will ship TDRS-K from its satellite assembly facility in El Segundo, Calif., to Cape Canaveral, Fla., in November. The December launch of TDRS-K will be aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is home to the team responsible for building and launching these satellites. Once in orbit, the new satellite will become part of NASA's Space Network, which incorporates a fleet of TDRS spacecraft. Currently, seven first- and second-generation satellites are connected in real-time to a series of ground stations and data facilities. This network provides the critical communications lifeline for NASA missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station.

NASA established the TDRS project in 1973 to provide around-the-clock communications to the agency's most critical missions in low Earth orbit. The TDRS design also increases the data rate of the space-to-ground communication service. The resulting system is a set of geosynchronous relay satellites distributed around the globe. Ground terminals complete the system, connecting scientists and engineers on Earth with satellites in orbit.

The first TDRS launched in April 1983. It was designed to handle an exponential increase in data volume and provide a major increase in coverage for low Earth orbit spacecraft. When TDRS-1 was launched from space shuttle Challenger, TDRS spacecraft were the largest, most sophisticated communication satellites ever built. After on-orbit checkout, TDRS-1 began providing communication support to space shuttle missions in late 1983. On that first mission, TDRS transmissions enabled more shuttle data flow to the ground than had been accomplished in the previous seven shuttle missions combined.

NASA continued adding first generation TDRS spacecraft until 1995. TRW, later to become Northrop Grumman built seven satellites. TDRS-2 was lost aboard Challenger in 1986. From 2000-2002, NASA added three second-generation spacecraft to the fleet. Hughes, now the Boeing Co., built the TDRS-H, I and J satellites, which continue operating along with four members of the first generation.

It has been almost thirty years, and the TDRS constellation continues to play a major role in maintaining a reliable communications network for NASA with critical, non-interrupted connections. Of the nine TDRS satellites launched, seven are still operational. Two have been retired. NASA engineers recognize the fleet is aging and are working to replenish the fleet with a new generation of TDRS satellites.

TDRS-K will be the first of three, next generation satellites designed to ensure vital operational continuity for NASA. TDRS-L is scheduled to launch in 2013, and TDRS-M is planned to launch in 2015.

The TDRS network provides critical support to NASA's human spaceflight endeavors that began during the shuttle era and continues with ongoing International Space Station support. It also provides communications support to an array of science missions, as well as various types of launch vehicles.

As a vital information pipeline for space-based research and exploration ambitions, TDRS fulfills NASA's broadest communication demands. Now in its third operational decade, the TDRS legacy of communications excellence has become key to enabling many of NASA's scientific discoveries. TDRS-K continues a legacy while increasing bandwidth of a network that has become the vital communications link for the missions of NASA.

NASA's Swift Satellite Discovers a New Black Hole in our Galaxy

 

An X-ray outburst caught by NASA's Swift on Sept. 16, 2012, resulted from a flood of gas plunging toward a previously unknown black hole. Gas flowing from a sun-like star collects into a disk around the black hole. Normally, this gas would steadily spiral inward. But in this system, named Swift J1745-26, the gas collects for decades before suddenly surging inward.

NASA's Swift satellite recently detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole.

"Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they're essentially once-a-mission events and this is the first one Swift has seen," said Neil Gehrels, the mission's principal investigator, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is really something we've been waiting for."

An X-ray nova is a short-lived X-ray source that appears suddenly, reaches its emission peak in a few days and then fades out over a period of months. The outburst arises when a torrent of stored gas suddenly rushes toward one of the most compact objects known, either a neutron star or a black hole.

The rapidly brightening source triggered Swift's Burst Alert Telescope twice on the morning of Sept. 16, and once again the next day.

Named Swift J1745-26 after the coordinates of its sky position, the nova is located a few degrees from the center of our galaxy toward the constellation Sagittarius. While astronomers do not know its precise distance, they think the object resides about 20,000 to 30,000 light-years away in the galaxy's inner region.

Ground-based observatories detected infrared and radio emissions, but thick clouds of obscuring dust have prevented astronomers from catching Swift J1745-26 in visible light.

The nova peaked in hard X-rays -- energies above 10,000 electron volts, or several thousand times that of visible light -- on Sept. 18, when it reached an intensity equivalent to that of the famous Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant that serves as a calibration target for high-energy observatories and is considered one of the brightest sources beyond the solar system at these energies.

Even as it dimmed at higher energies, the nova brightened in the lower-energy, or softer, emissions detected by Swift's X-ray Telescope, a behavior typical of X-ray novae. By Wednesday, Swift J1745-26 was 30 times brighter in soft X-rays than when it was discovered and it continued to brighten.

"The pattern we're seeing is observed in X-ray novae where the central object is a black hole. Once the X-rays fade away, we hope to measure its mass and confirm its black hole status," said Boris Sbarufatti, an astrophysicist at Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, who currently is working with other Swift team members at Penn State in University Park, Pa.

The black hole must be a member of a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system, which includes a normal, sun-like star. A stream of gas flows from the normal star and enters into a storage disk around the black hole. In most LMXBs, the gas in the disk spirals inward, heats up as it heads toward the black hole, and produces a steady stream of X-rays.

But under certain conditions, stable flow within the disk depends on the rate of matter flowing into it from the companion star. At certain rates, the disk fails to maintain a steady internal flow and instead flips between two dramatically different conditions -- a cooler, less ionized state where gas simply collects in the outer portion of the disk like water behind a dam, and a hotter, more ionized state that sends a tidal wave of gas surging toward the center.

"Each outburst clears out the inner disk, and with little or no matter falling toward the black hole, the system ceases to be a bright source of X-rays," said John Cannizzo, a Goddard astrophysicist. "Decades later, after enough gas has accumulated in the outer disk, it switches again to its hot state and sends a deluge of gas toward the black hole, resulting in a new X-ray outburst."

This phenomenon, called the thermal-viscous limit cycle, helps astronomers explain transient outbursts across a wide range of systems, from protoplanetary disks around young stars, to dwarf novae -- where the central object is a white dwarf star -- and even bright emission from supermassive black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies.

Swift, launched in November 2004, is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center. It is operated in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., with international collaborators in the United Kingdom and Italy and including contributions from Germany and Japan.

NASA Rover Finds Old Streambed on Martian Surface

 

NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named "Hottah" after Hottah Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. 

In this image from NASA's Curiosity rover, a rock outcrop called Link pops out from a Martian surface that is elsewhere blanketed by reddish-brown dust.

https://www.facebook.com/researchspace This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).

This map shows the path on Mars of NASA's Curiosity rover toward Glenelg, an area where three terrains of scientific interest converge.

This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right).  PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its kind.
Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream's flow.
"From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."
The finding site lies between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside the crater. Earlier imaging of the region from Mars orbit allows for additional interpretation of the gravel-bearing conglomerate. The imagery shows an alluvial fan of material washed down from the rim, streaked by many apparent channels, sitting uphill of the new finds.
The rounded shape of some stones in the conglomerate indicates long-distance transport from above the rim, where a channel named Peace Vallis feeds into the alluvial fan. The abundance of channels in the fan between the rim and conglomerate suggests flows continued or repeated over a long time, not just once or for a few years.
The discovery comes from examining two outcrops, called "Hottah" and "Link," with the telephoto capability of Curiosity's mast camera during the first 40 days after landing. Those observations followed up on earlier hints from another outcrop, which was exposed by thruster exhaust as Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory Project's rover, touched down.
"Hottah looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's really a tilted block of an ancient streambed," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The gravels in conglomerates at both outcrops range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball. Some are angular, but many are rounded.
"The shapes tell you they were transported and the sizes tell you they couldn't be transported by wind. They were transported by water flow," said Curiosity science co-investigator Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.
The science team may use Curiosity to learn the elemental composition of the material, which holds the conglomerate together, revealing more characteristics of the wet environment that formed these deposits. The stones in the conglomerate provide a sampling from above the crater rim, so the team may also examine several of them to learn about broader regional geology.
The slope of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater remains the rover's main destination. Clay and sulfate minerals detected there from orbit can be good preservers of carbon-based organic chemicals that are potential ingredients for life.
"A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment," said Grotzinger. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though. We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."
During the two-year prime mission of the Mars Science Laboratory, researchers will use Curiosity's 10 instruments to investigate whether areas in Gale Crater have ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, built Curiosity and manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Mars Rover Opportunity Working at 'Matijevic Hill'

 

Rock fins up to about about 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall dominate this scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, well into its ninth year on Mars, will work for the next several weeks or months at a site with some of the mission's most intriguing geological features.
The site, called "Matijevic Hill," overlooks 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater. Opportunity has begun investigating the site's concentration of small spherical objects reminiscent of, but different from, the iron-rich spheres nicknamed "blueberries" at the rover's landing site nearly 22 driving miles ago (35 kilometers).
The small spheres at Matijevic Hill have different composition and internal structure. Opportunity's science team is evaluating a range of possibilities for how they formed. The spheres are up to about an eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter.
The "blueberries" found earlier are concretions formed by the action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, but that is only one of the ways nature can make small, rounded particles. One working hypothesis, out of several, is that the new-found spherules are also concretions but with a different composition. Others include that they may be accretionary lapilli formed in volcanic ash eruptions, impact spherules formed in impact events, or devitrification spherules resulting from formation of crystals from formerly melted material. There are other possibilities, too.
"Right now we have multiple working hypotheses, and each hypothesis makes certain predictions about things like what the spherules are made of and how they are distributed," said Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Our job as we explore Matijevic Hill in the months ahead will be to make the observations that will let us test all the hypotheses carefully, and find the one that best fits the observations."
The team chose to refer to this important site as Matijevic Hill in honor of Jacob Matijevic (1947-2012), who led the engineering team for the twin Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity for several years before and after their landings. He worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., from 1981 until his death last month, most recently as chief engineer for surface operations systems of NASA's third-generation Mars rover, Curiosity. In the 1990s, he led the engineering team for the first Mars rover, Sojourner.
A different Mars rover team, operating Curiosity, has also named a feature for Matijevic: a rock that Curiosity recently investigated about halfway around the planet from Matijevic Hill.
"We wouldn't have gotten to Matijevic Hill, eight-and-a-half years after Opportunity's landing, without Jake Matijevic," Squyres said.
Opportunity's project manager, John Callas, of JPL, said, "If there is one person who represents the heart and soul of all three generations of Mars rovers -- Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity -- it was Jake."

NOAA's GOES-13 Weather Satellite Currently Has an Acting Back-Up

 

Artist's conception of the GOES-13 satellite. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-13 became the official GOES-EAST satellite on April 14, 2010. GOES-13 was moved from on-orbit storage and into active duty. 

The Imager and Sounder instruments on NOAA's GOES-13 satellite sent this image on Sept. 23 at 2045 UTC (4:45 p.m. EDT). The last visible image shows a cold front located off the U.S. East coast.

NOAA's GOES-13 weather satellite has been temporarily substituted with the back-up GOES satellite as engineers work to fix the satellite's issues.

NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13 sits in a fixed orbit over the eastern U.S. and provides continuous coverage of weather systems over the continental U.S. and the Atlantic Ocean basin.

According to NOAA, the GOES-13 Imager went out of service since September 23, 2012 at 2122 UTC (5:22 p.m. EDT), and the GOES-13 Sounder went out of service on September 23, 2012 at 1126 UTC (7:26 a.m. EDT).

The last GOES-13 image occurred on Sept. 23 at 2045 UTC (4:45 p.m. EDT) and showed a cold front located off the U.S. East coast.

GOES-13's performance was inconsistent over the days leading up to the end of the data stream. GOES-15, which is NOAA’s GOES-West satellite continued to provide coverage for the US, but is unable to cover the Atlantic Ocean and the east coast. NOAA called into operation the on-orbit spare GOES satellite, called GOES-14, to provide better coverage of the eastern U.S. and to cover most of the Atlantic Ocean. GOES-13 is still transmitting data. GOES-14 data is being relayed via GOES-13 so that users do not have to repoint antennae. Meanwhile, engineers are working to repair the problems with the GOES-13 Imager and Sounder data.

According to a satellite bulletin from NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, Satellite Products and Services Division on Sept. 25, "GOES-13 remains in an Earth pointing nominal attitude with the Imager and Sounder in Standby modes while the September 23 anomaly is being investigated. No estimate on return to operations at this time. Cause and corrective actions are under investigation."

NOAA's GOES-14 satellite remains in a fixed orbit at 105 degrees West with no current plans to drift east, according to NOAA. GOES-14 data began flowing through operational GOES East data paths at 1745 UTC (1:45 p.m. EDT) on Sept. 24, and the first imagery was received at 1830 UTC (2:30 p.m. EDT) on September 24, 2012.

NOAA manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., procures and manages the design, development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost reimbursable basis.

SCaN Testbed installed on the International Space Station. (NASA)

 

Want to be a part of International Space Station research? Here's your chance. NASA is offering opportunities for academia, industry and government agencies to develop and carry out research and technology demonstrations on the space station using the newly installed Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed.

These opportunities will allow researchers to develop new software according to the Space Telecommunications Radio Standard, or STRS, architecture for radios and reconfigure how radios communicate in space.

The SCaN Testbed is a communications, navigation and networking demonstration platform based on the STRS. The experimental platform began its initial checkout activities on the space station Aug. 13, and will operate for at least three years.

Experiment developers will provide software components to the STRS repository and enable future hardware platforms to use common reusable software modules.

"This new testbed is comprised of three STRS-compliant, software-defined radios to be operated in space," said Richard Reinhart, principal investigator of the SCaN Testbed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "This flexible testbed will allow researchers to develop new software according to the STRS architecture for the radios and reconfigure how the radios communicate on-orbit, to explore new concepts for future missions. Once proven, this new capability will enable greater science return from future NASA missions."

There are two opportunities to use the testbed on the station.

The SCaN Testbed Experiment Opportunity invites industry and government agencies to enter into Space Act Agreements with NASA to use the SCaN Testbed on space station. The SCaN Testbed Cooperative Agreement Notice invites academia to develop proposals to use the orbiting laboratory's SCaN Testbed research capabilities. NASA expects these first industry, government agency, and university demonstrations to take place by late 2013 or early 2014.

"These two announcements of opportunity provide industry, academia and government agency experimenters a unique service and facility to develop and field the latest communications, navigation and networking technologies not only in the laboratory, but also in the dynamic space environment," said David Irimies, deputy project manager of the SCaN Testbed at Glenn. "Investigators will gain valuable flight experience, raise the technology maturity level of their applications by operating within the space environment, and demonstrate future mission capabilities for a potentially key role in future NASA missions."