Scientists analyzing recent data from NASA's Voyager and Cassini spacecraft have calculated that Voyager 1 could cross over into the frontier of interstellar space at any time and much earlier than previously thought. The findings are detailed in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Data from Voyager's low-energy charged particle instrument, first reported in December 2010, have indicated that the outward speed of the charged particles streaming from the sun has slowed to zero. The stagnation of this solar wind has continued through at least February 2011, marking a thick, previously unpredicted "transition zone" at the edge of our solar system.
"There is one time we are going to cross that frontier, and this is the first sign it is upon us," said Tom Krimigis, prinicipal investigator for Voyager's low-energy charged particle instrument and Cassini's magnetospheric imaging instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
Krimigis and colleagues combined the new Voyager data with previously unpublished measurements from the ion and neutral camera on Cassini's magnetospheric imaging instrument. The Cassini instrument collects data on neutral atoms streaming into our solar system from the outside.
The analysis indicates that the boundary between interstellar space and the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself is likely between 10 and 14 billion miles (16 to 23 billion kilometers) from the sun, with a best estimate of approximately 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers). Since Voyager 1 is already nearly 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) out, it could cross into interstellar space at any time.
"These calculations show we're getting close, but how close? That's what we don't know, but Voyager 1 speeds outward a billion miles every three years, so we may not have long to wait," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist, based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Scientists intend to keep analyzing the Voyager 1 data, looking for confirmation. They will also be studying the Voyager 2 data, but Voyager 2 is not as close to the edge of the solar system as Voyager 1. Voyager 2 is about 9 billion miles (14 billion kilometers) away from the sun.
Launched in 1977, the Voyager twin spacecraft have been on a 33-year journey. They are humanity's farthest working deep space sentinels enroute to reach the edge of interstellar space. The Voyagers were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20110615.html
Data from Voyager's low-energy charged particle instrument, first reported in December 2010, have indicated that the outward speed of the charged particles streaming from the sun has slowed to zero. The stagnation of this solar wind has continued through at least February 2011, marking a thick, previously unpredicted "transition zone" at the edge of our solar system.
"There is one time we are going to cross that frontier, and this is the first sign it is upon us," said Tom Krimigis, prinicipal investigator for Voyager's low-energy charged particle instrument and Cassini's magnetospheric imaging instrument, based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
Krimigis and colleagues combined the new Voyager data with previously unpublished measurements from the ion and neutral camera on Cassini's magnetospheric imaging instrument. The Cassini instrument collects data on neutral atoms streaming into our solar system from the outside.
The analysis indicates that the boundary between interstellar space and the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself is likely between 10 and 14 billion miles (16 to 23 billion kilometers) from the sun, with a best estimate of approximately 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers). Since Voyager 1 is already nearly 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) out, it could cross into interstellar space at any time.
"These calculations show we're getting close, but how close? That's what we don't know, but Voyager 1 speeds outward a billion miles every three years, so we may not have long to wait," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist, based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Scientists intend to keep analyzing the Voyager 1 data, looking for confirmation. They will also be studying the Voyager 2 data, but Voyager 2 is not as close to the edge of the solar system as Voyager 1. Voyager 2 is about 9 billion miles (14 billion kilometers) away from the sun.
Launched in 1977, the Voyager twin spacecraft have been on a 33-year journey. They are humanity's farthest working deep space sentinels enroute to reach the edge of interstellar space. The Voyagers were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/voyager20110615.html
This is an artist's concept of the Saturnian plasma sheet based on data from Cassini magnetospheric imaging instrument. It shows Saturn's embedded "ring current," an invisible ring of energetic ions trapped in the planet's magnetic field.
Saturn is at the center, with the red "donut" representing the distribution of dense neutral gas outside Saturn's icy rings. Beyond this region, energetic ions populate the plasma sheet to the dayside magnetopause filling the faintly sketched magnetic flux tubes to higher latitudes and contributing to the ring current. The plasma sheet thins gradually toward the nightside. The view is from above Saturn's equatorial plane, which is represented by grid lines. The moon Titan's location is shown for scale. The location of the bow shock is marked, as is the flow of the deflected solar wind in the magnetosheath.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The magnetospheric imaging instrument was designed, built and is operated by an international team lead by the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Md.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/gallery/pia10084.html
Saturn is at the center, with the red "donut" representing the distribution of dense neutral gas outside Saturn's icy rings. Beyond this region, energetic ions populate the plasma sheet to the dayside magnetopause filling the faintly sketched magnetic flux tubes to higher latitudes and contributing to the ring current. The plasma sheet thins gradually toward the nightside. The view is from above Saturn's equatorial plane, which is represented by grid lines. The moon Titan's location is shown for scale. The location of the bow shock is marked, as is the flow of the deflected solar wind in the magnetosheath.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The magnetospheric imaging instrument was designed, built and is operated by an international team lead by the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Md.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/gallery/pia10084.html
Satellites provide a lot of useful information and the Landsat 5 satellite captured an image of the long damage track created on June 1, 2011 when a tornado tracked from Springfield to Sturbridge, Mass. An earlier image is now available from 2010 that enables people to more clearly see the damage path the June 2011 twister created on its eastward track.
A Landsat 5 satellite image from October 8, 2010 has been released from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that shows the area between Springfield and Sturbridge, Mass. where the tornado touched down.
Emergency managers and land managers have contacted NASA and have been using Landsat imagery to determine the tornado's damage path, and help assess what areas have been affected.
The Springfield tornado touched down on June 1, 2011, from a supercell thunderstorm that developed over western Massachusetts. The movement of that storm system was captured in an animation by the Geostationary Operational Environmental (GOES-13) satellite. NASA's GOES Project created the animation from the NOAA managed satellite, and it shows the bubbling up of thunderstorms that possibly spawned the tornadoes.
The supercell thunderstorm produced an EF3 tornado that cut a 39-mile (63-kilometer) track of destruction across southwest and south-central Massachusetts. The tornado remained on the ground for many miles and widened to 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers), making the path on satellite imagery more obvious.
Landsat 5's Thematic Mapper captured a natural-color image on June 5, 2011 that clearly showed the tornado track, especially when compared with the image from 2010. The after image shows part of the tornado track, including damage in Sturbridge. A tornado was reported on the ground in Sturbridge at 5:22 p.m. according to the Boston Globe newspaper.
The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Since 1972, Landsat satellites have collected information about Earth from space. This science, known as remote sensing, has matured with the Landsat Program.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/mass-tornado-beforeafter.html
A Landsat 5 satellite image from October 8, 2010 has been released from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that shows the area between Springfield and Sturbridge, Mass. where the tornado touched down.
Emergency managers and land managers have contacted NASA and have been using Landsat imagery to determine the tornado's damage path, and help assess what areas have been affected.
The Springfield tornado touched down on June 1, 2011, from a supercell thunderstorm that developed over western Massachusetts. The movement of that storm system was captured in an animation by the Geostationary Operational Environmental (GOES-13) satellite. NASA's GOES Project created the animation from the NOAA managed satellite, and it shows the bubbling up of thunderstorms that possibly spawned the tornadoes.
The supercell thunderstorm produced an EF3 tornado that cut a 39-mile (63-kilometer) track of destruction across southwest and south-central Massachusetts. The tornado remained on the ground for many miles and widened to 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers), making the path on satellite imagery more obvious.
Landsat 5's Thematic Mapper captured a natural-color image on June 5, 2011 that clearly showed the tornado track, especially when compared with the image from 2010. The after image shows part of the tornado track, including damage in Sturbridge. A tornado was reported on the ground in Sturbridge at 5:22 p.m. according to the Boston Globe newspaper.
The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Since 1972, Landsat satellites have collected information about Earth from space. This science, known as remote sensing, has matured with the Landsat Program.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/mass-tornado-beforeafter.html
The international Aquarius/SAC-D Earth-observing mission, carrying the NASA-built Aquarius instrument, is scheduled to launch at 7:20 a.m. PDT (10:20 a.m. EDT), June 10, 2011, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, along California's central coast. Aquarius will measure the saltiness of Earth's ocean surface to improve climate forecasts.
The satellite observatory is nestled inside the top of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Spacecraft separation from the Delta II is scheduled to occur 56 minutes 42 seconds after launch. One minute later, the observatory's solar panels are scheduled to deploy.
The following spacecraft events will be checked off as they occur:
Launch
The Delta II rocket carrying the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory, with NASA's Aquarius mission, has lifted off into the morning skies above Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. It is heading up and out over the Pacific Ocean.
Fairing separates
The Delta II's first-stage engine has completed its burn, its second-stage engine has ignited as planned, and the rocket's nose cone, or fairing, has separated and been jettisoned as planned, exposing the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory to space.
Coast phase
The Delta II rocket's second-stage engine has temporarily stopped firing, as planned, and the rocket and Aquarius/SAC-D observatory have begun a planned 42-minute, 40-second coast phase. During this time, the second-stage engine will perform two sets of attitude re-orientation maneuvers.
Spacecraft separates and solar arrays are deployed
The Aquarius/SAC-D observatory has successfully separated from its Delta II rocket, ground controllers have acquired its signal, and its solar arrays have been deployed to provide power.
On launch day, June 10, NASA TV commentary coverage of the countdown will begin at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). The coverage will be webcast at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .
Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog also begins at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). Coverage features real-time updates of countdown milestones, as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff.
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-177
The satellite observatory is nestled inside the top of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Spacecraft separation from the Delta II is scheduled to occur 56 minutes 42 seconds after launch. One minute later, the observatory's solar panels are scheduled to deploy.
The following spacecraft events will be checked off as they occur:
Launch
The Delta II rocket carrying the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory, with NASA's Aquarius mission, has lifted off into the morning skies above Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. It is heading up and out over the Pacific Ocean.
Fairing separates
The Delta II's first-stage engine has completed its burn, its second-stage engine has ignited as planned, and the rocket's nose cone, or fairing, has separated and been jettisoned as planned, exposing the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory to space.
Coast phase
The Delta II rocket's second-stage engine has temporarily stopped firing, as planned, and the rocket and Aquarius/SAC-D observatory have begun a planned 42-minute, 40-second coast phase. During this time, the second-stage engine will perform two sets of attitude re-orientation maneuvers.
Spacecraft separates and solar arrays are deployed
The Aquarius/SAC-D observatory has successfully separated from its Delta II rocket, ground controllers have acquired its signal, and its solar arrays have been deployed to provide power.
On launch day, June 10, NASA TV commentary coverage of the countdown will begin at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). The coverage will be webcast at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .
Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog also begins at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). Coverage features real-time updates of countdown milestones, as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff.
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-177
The international Aquarius/SAC-D Earth-observing mission, carrying the NASA-built Aquarius instrument, is scheduled to launch at 7:20 a.m. PDT (10:20 a.m. EDT), June 10, 2011, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, along California's central coast. Aquarius will measure the saltiness of Earth's ocean surface to improve climate forecasts.
The satellite observatory is nestled inside the top of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Spacecraft separation from the Delta II is scheduled to occur 56 minutes 42 seconds after launch. One minute later, the observatory's solar panels are scheduled to deploy.
The following spacecraft events will be checked off as they occur:
Launch
The Delta II rocket carrying the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory, with NASA's Aquarius mission, has lifted off into the morning skies above Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. It is heading up and out over the Pacific Ocean.
Fairing separates
The Delta II's first-stage engine has completed its burn, its second-stage engine has ignited as planned, and the rocket's nose cone, or fairing, has separated and been jettisoned as planned, exposing the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory to space.
Coast phase
The Delta II rocket's second-stage engine has temporarily stopped firing, as planned, and the rocket and Aquarius/SAC-D observatory have begun a planned 42-minute, 40-second coast phase. During this time, the second-stage engine will perform two sets of attitude re-orientation maneuvers.
Spacecraft separates and solar arrays are deployed
The Aquarius/SAC-D observatory has successfully separated from its Delta II rocket, ground controllers have acquired its signal, and its solar arrays have been deployed to provide power.
On launch day, June 10, NASA TV commentary coverage of the countdown will begin at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). The coverage will be webcast at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .
Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog also begins at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). Coverage features real-time updates of countdown milestones, as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff. To access these features, and for more information on Aquarius, go to NASA's Aquarius/SAC-D mission website at http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius .
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-177
The satellite observatory is nestled inside the top of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Spacecraft separation from the Delta II is scheduled to occur 56 minutes 42 seconds after launch. One minute later, the observatory's solar panels are scheduled to deploy.
The following spacecraft events will be checked off as they occur:
Launch
The Delta II rocket carrying the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory, with NASA's Aquarius mission, has lifted off into the morning skies above Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. It is heading up and out over the Pacific Ocean.
Fairing separates
The Delta II's first-stage engine has completed its burn, its second-stage engine has ignited as planned, and the rocket's nose cone, or fairing, has separated and been jettisoned as planned, exposing the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory to space.
Coast phase
The Delta II rocket's second-stage engine has temporarily stopped firing, as planned, and the rocket and Aquarius/SAC-D observatory have begun a planned 42-minute, 40-second coast phase. During this time, the second-stage engine will perform two sets of attitude re-orientation maneuvers.
Spacecraft separates and solar arrays are deployed
The Aquarius/SAC-D observatory has successfully separated from its Delta II rocket, ground controllers have acquired its signal, and its solar arrays have been deployed to provide power.
On launch day, June 10, NASA TV commentary coverage of the countdown will begin at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). The coverage will be webcast at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .
Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog also begins at 5:30 a.m. PDT (8:30 a.m. EDT). Coverage features real-time updates of countdown milestones, as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff. To access these features, and for more information on Aquarius, go to NASA's Aquarius/SAC-D mission website at http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius .
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-177
Ever since they were announced, the spiders in space have been living in the limelight. This is, of course, the point -- to watch and learn as the pair of golden orb spiders, or Nephila clavipes, adapt to living in microgravity on the International Space Station. As a result, these two arachnids, dubbed Gladys and Esmeralda by astronaut Cady Coleman, are reaching celebrity status.
The spiders are part of the scientific investigation called Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus Science Insert-05, or CSI-05. This study houses the two spiders in separate habitats and includes chambers for their food supply of fruit flies. Artificial light simulates day and nighttime, as well as temperature and humidity control. The habitats reside in the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, or CGBA, on the station, which controls imaging of the arachnids’ activities.
After launching in style as part of the last flight of Endeavour on May 16, 2011, the spiders found their popularity continued to grow. Teachers registered more than 130,000 students so far, gaining instructional materials and the chance to tune in and follow the arachnids' antics via space station videos. In one of the more recent video uploads, Esmeralda displayed diva-like qualities as she showed her hunting skills to be as sharp as ever in microgravity. The video of her capturing a fruit fly on May 26, 2011 is on now available for viewing on YouTube.
Schools around the globe continue to participate in the spider study by visiting BioEd Online. From this site teachers can download a guide to create a control habitat, complete with spider, for their classrooms. "Spiders and space are two things that capture the imagination of most kids, so it's a recipe for fascinating science in the schools," comments International Space Station Associate Program Scientist Tara Ruttley. "I think this will create great memories for the students, and a way to show them how science can be fun as their science classes become more challenging through the years."
Even before they left the ground, the popularity of the spiders was evident, as seen at the prelaunch tweetup on April 28, 2011. This NASA-hosted event brought together registered Twitter users to listen to NASA experts speak on mission-related topics. The participants then shared this information in real time over the social media site. When one of the siblings of Gladys and Esmeralda -- who were already aboard the shuttle on the launch pad -- made a live appearance, it inspired a frenzy of tweets from new fans.
Ruttley was one of the tweetup speakers and also had the unofficial role of spider wrangler at the event, which took place at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. "As I gave my talk at the tweetup, the spider was passed around within its habitat, seemingly happy enough to spin a pretty amazing web," said Ruttley. "I think the spiders were such a hit with those at the launch because a spider spinning a web is something that everyone can understand and relate to."
The golden orb spider actually spins and then consumes its web on a daily basis. This practice provides the protein necessary to enable renewed web activities each day. Ruttley found this out firsthand, "I noticed the web was gone the next morning, this is because the golden orb spiders actually eat their web overnight and start again the next day, all fresh."
The golden orb spider usually spins a three dimensional, asymmetric web on Earth, but in space they spin more circular webs. The current spiders also prefer to spin according to a timetable, as compared to the orb spiders -- Larinioides patagiatus and Metepeira -- from the previous CSI-03 investigation, who would spin at all times of day. "These spiders seem to stick to a more regimented schedule of spinning in the early morning hours and taking their web down right after lights out." said Stefanie Countryman, Project Manager for CSI-05 at BioServe Space Technologies, University of Colorado.
By watching how a control spider spins on Earth, compared to Esmeralda and Gladys on the space station, students and scientists hope to better understand behavior changes in response to the microgravity environment. The investigation on the space station may only last for 45 days, but the impact of these tiny celebrities will live on in research data and in the minds of their admirers.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/space_spiders_live.html
The spiders are part of the scientific investigation called Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus Science Insert-05, or CSI-05. This study houses the two spiders in separate habitats and includes chambers for their food supply of fruit flies. Artificial light simulates day and nighttime, as well as temperature and humidity control. The habitats reside in the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, or CGBA, on the station, which controls imaging of the arachnids’ activities.
After launching in style as part of the last flight of Endeavour on May 16, 2011, the spiders found their popularity continued to grow. Teachers registered more than 130,000 students so far, gaining instructional materials and the chance to tune in and follow the arachnids' antics via space station videos. In one of the more recent video uploads, Esmeralda displayed diva-like qualities as she showed her hunting skills to be as sharp as ever in microgravity. The video of her capturing a fruit fly on May 26, 2011 is on now available for viewing on YouTube.
Schools around the globe continue to participate in the spider study by visiting BioEd Online. From this site teachers can download a guide to create a control habitat, complete with spider, for their classrooms. "Spiders and space are two things that capture the imagination of most kids, so it's a recipe for fascinating science in the schools," comments International Space Station Associate Program Scientist Tara Ruttley. "I think this will create great memories for the students, and a way to show them how science can be fun as their science classes become more challenging through the years."
Even before they left the ground, the popularity of the spiders was evident, as seen at the prelaunch tweetup on April 28, 2011. This NASA-hosted event brought together registered Twitter users to listen to NASA experts speak on mission-related topics. The participants then shared this information in real time over the social media site. When one of the siblings of Gladys and Esmeralda -- who were already aboard the shuttle on the launch pad -- made a live appearance, it inspired a frenzy of tweets from new fans.
Ruttley was one of the tweetup speakers and also had the unofficial role of spider wrangler at the event, which took place at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. "As I gave my talk at the tweetup, the spider was passed around within its habitat, seemingly happy enough to spin a pretty amazing web," said Ruttley. "I think the spiders were such a hit with those at the launch because a spider spinning a web is something that everyone can understand and relate to."
The golden orb spider actually spins and then consumes its web on a daily basis. This practice provides the protein necessary to enable renewed web activities each day. Ruttley found this out firsthand, "I noticed the web was gone the next morning, this is because the golden orb spiders actually eat their web overnight and start again the next day, all fresh."
The golden orb spider usually spins a three dimensional, asymmetric web on Earth, but in space they spin more circular webs. The current spiders also prefer to spin according to a timetable, as compared to the orb spiders -- Larinioides patagiatus and Metepeira -- from the previous CSI-03 investigation, who would spin at all times of day. "These spiders seem to stick to a more regimented schedule of spinning in the early morning hours and taking their web down right after lights out." said Stefanie Countryman, Project Manager for CSI-05 at BioServe Space Technologies, University of Colorado.
By watching how a control spider spins on Earth, compared to Esmeralda and Gladys on the space station, students and scientists hope to better understand behavior changes in response to the microgravity environment. The investigation on the space station may only last for 45 days, but the impact of these tiny celebrities will live on in research data and in the minds of their admirers.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/space_spiders_live.html
The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7, 2011 from sunspot complex 1226-1227. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed the flare's peak at 1:41a.m. ET (0641 UT). SDO recorded these images (above) in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K.
All of the solar Heliophysics System Observatory missions captured the event.
When viewed in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) coronagraphs (top right), the event shows bright plasma and high-energy particles roaring from the Sun.
Also to the right are links to the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) Ahead and Behind coronograph videos showing the CME expansion as viewed from each side of the sun. The STEREO Ahead satellite precedes the Earth as it circles the Sun. The STEREO Behind satellite follows behind the Earth in it's orbit of the Sun. (NOTE: Both STEREO videos will be replaced by better quality version when they become available in 48 hours.)
This not-squarely Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models. The CME should deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News060711-blast.html
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed the flare's peak at 1:41a.m. ET (0641 UT). SDO recorded these images (above) in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K.
All of the solar Heliophysics System Observatory missions captured the event.
When viewed in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) coronagraphs (top right), the event shows bright plasma and high-energy particles roaring from the Sun.
Also to the right are links to the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) Ahead and Behind coronograph videos showing the CME expansion as viewed from each side of the sun. The STEREO Ahead satellite precedes the Earth as it circles the Sun. The STEREO Behind satellite follows behind the Earth in it's orbit of the Sun. (NOTE: Both STEREO videos will be replaced by better quality version when they become available in 48 hours.)
This not-squarely Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models. The CME should deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th or June 9th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News060711-blast.html
The Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft is seen at the launch pad after being raised into vertical position on Sunday, June 5, 2011, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Expedition 28 Soyuz Commander Sergei Volkov of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Mike Fossum and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa is scheduled for Tuesday, June 7, 2011.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1967a.html
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1967a.html
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is seen in silhouette, left, as he shook hands with workers atop the Mobile Launch Platform as space shuttle Atlantis rolled out of High Bay 3 in the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A for its final flight, Tuesday, May 31, 2011, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The 3.4-mile trek, known as rollout, took about seven hours to complete. On STS-135, the orbiter's final, Atlantis will carry the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station. The launch of STS-135 is targeted for July 8.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1966.html
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1966.html
Ancient astronomers looked up at the dark skies in wonder, as the stars marched by overhead like precision dancers. In the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei brought the world one step closer to the heavens with his telescope, discovering, among other celestial marvels, moons around Jupiter, and our own moon's pockmarked surface.
Nowadays, the stars are closer to us than ever, thanks to powerful telescopes in space and on the ground. Modern astronomers don't have to step outside, because they get precise data delivered straight to their own laptops. If Galileo could see us now, he'd probably be thrilled by the advances -- and also a little puzzled that astronomy no longer means gazing through telescopes at the twinkling, dark skies.
"You can access a priceless wealth of astronomy data from your couch," said Amy Mainzer, the deputy project scientist for NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We can do almost all of our research on our laptops."
Sometimes astronomers do take trips out to ground-based observatories. They sleep during the day, and, instead of peering up at the night sky, they command the telescopes from computer screens. Some telescopes can also be operated remotely from laptops. Mainzer and a colleague, Mike Cushing, a member of the WISE team at JPL, recently spent an evening with the stars in a conference room at NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
"I guess in some sense, there is a slight loss of romance doing remote observing," said Cushing. "But it is more than made up for by being able to sleep in your own bed!"
This particular night, Mainzer and Cushing, along with an undergraduate student, Emily DeBaun from Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., were on a hunt for brown dwarfs. These are cool, dim stars with somewhat stunted development. They begin life like stars, but never grow massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion and shine with sunlight, as our sun does so brilliantly. Instead, brown dwarfs glow because of the heat leftover from their formation. This heat makes them easy to see with infrared telescopes.
The first brown dwarf wasn't discovered until 1995, though these objects had been predicted to exist as far back as the 1960s. More discoveries rolled in during the early 2000s with the help of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, an infrared all-sky mapping project sponsored by the Infrared Analysis and Processing Center and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
The WISE mission promises to find even more of these little stars, with its improved infrared all-sky maps. In fact, WISE will likely more than double the number of known brown dwarfs out to 25 light-years from our sun, and it may even find one that's closer to us than our closet known star, Proxima Centauri, which is about 4 light-years away. The WISE telescope wrapped up its all-sky survey and went into hibernation in Feb. 2011, but astronomers are just now beginning to sift through the data.
Mainzer and Cushing had plucked a few good brown dwarf candidates out of the WISE data. Their next step was to use the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii to gather more information on the objects, and figure out if they are indeed brown dwarfs, and not something else, such as a distant galaxy masquerading as a nearby, cool star. That's what brought them to a quiet conference room late at night, when even the most owlish of the astronomers usually working in the building had gone home.
"You've got Guidedog," said Cushing, talking via speaker-phone to the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility telescope operator in Hawaii. Guidedog is the name of one of the computers that controls the camera on the telescope. The operator took control of the computer in order to focus the telescope.
Throughout the night, Mainzer and Cushing told the operator when they were ready to point the telescope at a different patch of sky, while controlling the specific settings from a software interface on their laptops. The laptop screen was projected onto a big screen in the conference room, where they could get a better view of the software.
One task involved placing their objects of interest into thin windows, or slits, which mask other nearby stars. Once the command was given to capture an image, an instrument on the Infrared Telescope Facility, called a spectrometer, broke apart the object's light into its basic components, much as a prism disperses sunlight into a rainbow. These data were then transformed into plots, called spectra, showing the various light intensities at each wavelength. The resulting peaks and dips revealed molecules making up the object, as well as its temperature.
"I think we bagged another T-dwarf," said Mainzer, referring to a classification system that organizes brown dwarfs according to their temperature. T-dwarfs are about 1,400 to 500 Kelvin (about 1,130 to 230 degrees Celsius). WISE will likely find even colder brown dwarfs, possibly even the elusive Y-dwarfs, which some theories say could be as cold as 200 Kelvin (minus 73 degrees Celsius). If such an object is revealed, it would be the coldest star-like body known.
The search for brown dwarfs continued on into night. Keeping the astronomers awake were bags of sweet-and-sour gummies and M&Ms, not to mention the thrill of discovering new worlds.
They stayed up until about 3 a.m. that night, which was midnight in Hawaii. The telescope was then handed off to another team of remote observers.
"We're still up late with the stars, even though we see them with electronic sensors instead of peering through the telescope with our own eyes," said Mainzer. "But compared to ancient astronomers, I think our sense of awe is the same, and we’re continuing the quest to understand our astonishing universe."
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-167
Nowadays, the stars are closer to us than ever, thanks to powerful telescopes in space and on the ground. Modern astronomers don't have to step outside, because they get precise data delivered straight to their own laptops. If Galileo could see us now, he'd probably be thrilled by the advances -- and also a little puzzled that astronomy no longer means gazing through telescopes at the twinkling, dark skies.
"You can access a priceless wealth of astronomy data from your couch," said Amy Mainzer, the deputy project scientist for NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We can do almost all of our research on our laptops."
Sometimes astronomers do take trips out to ground-based observatories. They sleep during the day, and, instead of peering up at the night sky, they command the telescopes from computer screens. Some telescopes can also be operated remotely from laptops. Mainzer and a colleague, Mike Cushing, a member of the WISE team at JPL, recently spent an evening with the stars in a conference room at NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
"I guess in some sense, there is a slight loss of romance doing remote observing," said Cushing. "But it is more than made up for by being able to sleep in your own bed!"
This particular night, Mainzer and Cushing, along with an undergraduate student, Emily DeBaun from Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., were on a hunt for brown dwarfs. These are cool, dim stars with somewhat stunted development. They begin life like stars, but never grow massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion and shine with sunlight, as our sun does so brilliantly. Instead, brown dwarfs glow because of the heat leftover from their formation. This heat makes them easy to see with infrared telescopes.
The first brown dwarf wasn't discovered until 1995, though these objects had been predicted to exist as far back as the 1960s. More discoveries rolled in during the early 2000s with the help of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, an infrared all-sky mapping project sponsored by the Infrared Analysis and Processing Center and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
The WISE mission promises to find even more of these little stars, with its improved infrared all-sky maps. In fact, WISE will likely more than double the number of known brown dwarfs out to 25 light-years from our sun, and it may even find one that's closer to us than our closet known star, Proxima Centauri, which is about 4 light-years away. The WISE telescope wrapped up its all-sky survey and went into hibernation in Feb. 2011, but astronomers are just now beginning to sift through the data.
Mainzer and Cushing had plucked a few good brown dwarf candidates out of the WISE data. Their next step was to use the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii to gather more information on the objects, and figure out if they are indeed brown dwarfs, and not something else, such as a distant galaxy masquerading as a nearby, cool star. That's what brought them to a quiet conference room late at night, when even the most owlish of the astronomers usually working in the building had gone home.
"You've got Guidedog," said Cushing, talking via speaker-phone to the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility telescope operator in Hawaii. Guidedog is the name of one of the computers that controls the camera on the telescope. The operator took control of the computer in order to focus the telescope.
Throughout the night, Mainzer and Cushing told the operator when they were ready to point the telescope at a different patch of sky, while controlling the specific settings from a software interface on their laptops. The laptop screen was projected onto a big screen in the conference room, where they could get a better view of the software.
One task involved placing their objects of interest into thin windows, or slits, which mask other nearby stars. Once the command was given to capture an image, an instrument on the Infrared Telescope Facility, called a spectrometer, broke apart the object's light into its basic components, much as a prism disperses sunlight into a rainbow. These data were then transformed into plots, called spectra, showing the various light intensities at each wavelength. The resulting peaks and dips revealed molecules making up the object, as well as its temperature.
"I think we bagged another T-dwarf," said Mainzer, referring to a classification system that organizes brown dwarfs according to their temperature. T-dwarfs are about 1,400 to 500 Kelvin (about 1,130 to 230 degrees Celsius). WISE will likely find even colder brown dwarfs, possibly even the elusive Y-dwarfs, which some theories say could be as cold as 200 Kelvin (minus 73 degrees Celsius). If such an object is revealed, it would be the coldest star-like body known.
The search for brown dwarfs continued on into night. Keeping the astronomers awake were bags of sweet-and-sour gummies and M&Ms, not to mention the thrill of discovering new worlds.
They stayed up until about 3 a.m. that night, which was midnight in Hawaii. The telescope was then handed off to another team of remote observers.
"We're still up late with the stars, even though we see them with electronic sensors instead of peering through the telescope with our own eyes," said Mainzer. "But compared to ancient astronomers, I think our sense of awe is the same, and we’re continuing the quest to understand our astonishing universe."
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-167
Prior to taking a new telescope into space, engineers must put the spacecraft and its instruments through a "spin cycle" test for durability to ensure they'll still work after experiencing the forces of a rocket launch. Finding out they don't work once they're in orbit is too late. The structure that houses the science instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope is undergoing that cycle of tests during the weeks of May 23 and 30 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. This structure is called the Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM.
The Webb telescope will experience significant shaking and gravitational forces when it is launched on the large Ariane V rocket. The ISIM structure will house the four main scientific instruments of the telescope.
During the testing process, as the ISIM structure is being spun and shaken, engineers take measurements to compare with their computer models. If there are discrepancies, the engineers hunt for the reasons so they can address them. The huge centrifuge will spin at speeds close to 11 rpm, exposing the ISIM structure to about 10 times the force of gravity.
Webb is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and will serve thousands of astronomers worldwide. Webb will study the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of planetary systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System. The Webb telescope is a joint mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/isim-spin-test.html
The Webb telescope will experience significant shaking and gravitational forces when it is launched on the large Ariane V rocket. The ISIM structure will house the four main scientific instruments of the telescope.
During the testing process, as the ISIM structure is being spun and shaken, engineers take measurements to compare with their computer models. If there are discrepancies, the engineers hunt for the reasons so they can address them. The huge centrifuge will spin at speeds close to 11 rpm, exposing the ISIM structure to about 10 times the force of gravity.
Webb is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and will serve thousands of astronomers worldwide. Webb will study the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of planetary systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System. The Webb telescope is a joint mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/isim-spin-test.html
On April 29, 2009, a five-second-long burst of gamma rays from the constellation Canes Venatici triggered the Burst Alert Telescope on NASA's Swift satellite. As with most gamma-ray bursts, this one -- now designated GRB 090429B -- heralded the death of a star some 30 times the sun's mass and the likely birth of a new black hole.
"What's important about this event isn't so much the 'what' but the 'where,'" said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "GRB 090429B exploded at the cosmic frontier, among some of the earliest stars to form in our universe."
Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time. GRB 090429B gives astronomers a glimpse of the cosmos as it appeared some 520 million years after the universe began.
Now, after two years of painstaking analysis, astronomers studying the afterglow of the explosion say they're confident that the blast was the farthest explosion yet identified -- and at a distance of 13.14 billion light-years, a contender for the most distant object now known.
Swift's discoveries continue to push the cosmic frontier deeper back in time. A gamma-ray burst detected on Sept. 4, 2005, was shown to be 12.77 billion light-years away. Until the new study dethroned it, GRB 090423, which was detected just six days before the current record-holder, reigned with a distance of about 13.04 billion light-years.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions, emitting more energy in a few seconds than our sun will during its energy-producing lifetime. Most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. When such a star runs out of fuel, its core collapses and likely forms a black hole surrounded by a dense hot disk of gas. Somehow, the black hole diverts part of the infalling matter into a pair of high-energy particle jets that tear through the collapsing star.
The jets move so fast -- upwards of 99.9 percent the speed of light -- that collisions within them produce gamma rays. When the jets breach the star's surface, a gamma-ray burst is born. The jet continues on, later striking gas beyond the star to produce afterglows.
"Catching these afterglows before they fade out is the key to determining distances for the bursts," Gehrels said. "Swift is designed to detect the bursts, rapidly locate them, and communicate the position to astronomers around the world." Once word gets out, the race is on to record as much information from the fading afterglow as possible.
In certain colors, the brightness of a distant object shows a characteristic drop caused by intervening gas clouds. The farther away the object is, the longer the wavelength where this sudden fade-out begins. Exploiting this effect gives astronomers a quick estimate of the blast's "redshift" -- a color shift toward the less energetic red end of the electromagnetic spectrum that indicates distance.
The Gemini-North Telescope in Hawaii captured optical and infrared images of GRB 090429B's quickly fading afterglow within about three hours of Swift's detection. “Gemini was the right telescope, in the right place, at the right time," said lead researcher Antonino Cucchiara at the University of California, Berkeley. "The data from Gemini was instrumental in allowing us to reach the conclusion that the object is likely the most distant GRB ever seen."
The team combined the Gemini images with wider-field images from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, which is also located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to narrow estimates of the object's redshift.
Announcing the finding at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston on Wednesday, May 25, the team reported a redshift of 9.4 for GRB 090429B. Other researchers have made claims for galaxies at comparable or even larger redshifts, with uncertain distance estimates, and the burst joins them as a candidate for the most distant object known.
Studies by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile were unable to locate any other object at the burst location once its afterglow had faded away, which means that the burst's host galaxy is so distant that it couldn’t be seen with the best existing telescopes. "Because of this, and the information provided by the Swift satellite, our confidence is extremely high that this event happened very, very early in the history of our universe,” Cucchiara said.
Swift, launched in November 2004, is managed by Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Penn State University, University Park, Pa., the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics of Gilbert, Ariz., in the U.S. International collaborators include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, and additional partners in Germany and Japan.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/swift-20110527.html
"What's important about this event isn't so much the 'what' but the 'where,'" said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "GRB 090429B exploded at the cosmic frontier, among some of the earliest stars to form in our universe."
Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time. GRB 090429B gives astronomers a glimpse of the cosmos as it appeared some 520 million years after the universe began.
Now, after two years of painstaking analysis, astronomers studying the afterglow of the explosion say they're confident that the blast was the farthest explosion yet identified -- and at a distance of 13.14 billion light-years, a contender for the most distant object now known.
Swift's discoveries continue to push the cosmic frontier deeper back in time. A gamma-ray burst detected on Sept. 4, 2005, was shown to be 12.77 billion light-years away. Until the new study dethroned it, GRB 090423, which was detected just six days before the current record-holder, reigned with a distance of about 13.04 billion light-years.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions, emitting more energy in a few seconds than our sun will during its energy-producing lifetime. Most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. When such a star runs out of fuel, its core collapses and likely forms a black hole surrounded by a dense hot disk of gas. Somehow, the black hole diverts part of the infalling matter into a pair of high-energy particle jets that tear through the collapsing star.
The jets move so fast -- upwards of 99.9 percent the speed of light -- that collisions within them produce gamma rays. When the jets breach the star's surface, a gamma-ray burst is born. The jet continues on, later striking gas beyond the star to produce afterglows.
"Catching these afterglows before they fade out is the key to determining distances for the bursts," Gehrels said. "Swift is designed to detect the bursts, rapidly locate them, and communicate the position to astronomers around the world." Once word gets out, the race is on to record as much information from the fading afterglow as possible.
In certain colors, the brightness of a distant object shows a characteristic drop caused by intervening gas clouds. The farther away the object is, the longer the wavelength where this sudden fade-out begins. Exploiting this effect gives astronomers a quick estimate of the blast's "redshift" -- a color shift toward the less energetic red end of the electromagnetic spectrum that indicates distance.
The Gemini-North Telescope in Hawaii captured optical and infrared images of GRB 090429B's quickly fading afterglow within about three hours of Swift's detection. “Gemini was the right telescope, in the right place, at the right time," said lead researcher Antonino Cucchiara at the University of California, Berkeley. "The data from Gemini was instrumental in allowing us to reach the conclusion that the object is likely the most distant GRB ever seen."
The team combined the Gemini images with wider-field images from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, which is also located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to narrow estimates of the object's redshift.
Announcing the finding at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston on Wednesday, May 25, the team reported a redshift of 9.4 for GRB 090429B. Other researchers have made claims for galaxies at comparable or even larger redshifts, with uncertain distance estimates, and the burst joins them as a candidate for the most distant object known.
Studies by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile were unable to locate any other object at the burst location once its afterglow had faded away, which means that the burst's host galaxy is so distant that it couldn’t be seen with the best existing telescopes. "Because of this, and the information provided by the Swift satellite, our confidence is extremely high that this event happened very, very early in the history of our universe,” Cucchiara said.
Swift, launched in November 2004, is managed by Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Penn State University, University Park, Pa., the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics of Gilbert, Ariz., in the U.S. International collaborators include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, and additional partners in Germany and Japan.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/swift-20110527.html
The three massive solar panels that will provide power for NASA's Juno spacecraft during its mission to Jupiter have seen their last photons of light until they are deployed in space after launch. The last of the Jupiter-bound spacecraft's panels completed pre-flight testing at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., and was folded against the side of the spacecraft into its launch configuration Thursday, May 26. The solar-powered Juno spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles 30 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
"Completing the testing and stow of solar panels is always a big pre-launch milestone, and with Juno, you could say really big because our panels are really big," said Jan Chodas, Juno's project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The next time these three massive solar arrays are extended to their full length, Juno will be climbing away from the Earth at about seven miles per second."
This is the first time in history a spacecraft has used solar power so far out in space (Jupiter is five times farther from the sun than Earth). To operate on the sun's light that far out requires solar panels about the size of the cargo section of a typical tractor-trailer you'd see on the interstate highway. Even with all that surface area pointed sunward, all three panels, which are 2.7 meters wide (9 feet), by 8.9 meters long (29 feet), will only generate about enough juice to power five standard light bulbs -- about 450 watts of electricity. If the arrays were optimized to operate at Earth, they would produce 12 to 14 kilowatts of power.
In other recent events, the 106-foot-long (32-meter-long), 12.5-foot-wide (3.8-meter-wide) first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle that will carry Juno into space arrived at the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 24, aboard the world's second largest cargo aircraft -- a Volga-Dnepr Antonov AN-124-100. The two-stage Atlas V, along with the five solid rocket boosters that ring the first stage, will be assembled and tested on site at Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral this summer.
The launch period for Juno opens Aug. 5, 2011, and extends through Aug. 26. For an Aug. 5 liftoff, the launch window opens at 8:39 a.m. PDT (11:39 am EDT) and remains open through 9:39 a.m. PDT (12:39 p.m. EDT).
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno .
You can learn more about the Juno mission to Jupiter by logging on to the mission's new website. The new site was created by Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton in conjunction with Radical Media of New York. "It is one-stop shopping for anyone who wants to be entertained as much as informed about space science and the upcoming Juno mission," said Bolton. This Juno website can be found at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu .
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-164
"Completing the testing and stow of solar panels is always a big pre-launch milestone, and with Juno, you could say really big because our panels are really big," said Jan Chodas, Juno's project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The next time these three massive solar arrays are extended to their full length, Juno will be climbing away from the Earth at about seven miles per second."
This is the first time in history a spacecraft has used solar power so far out in space (Jupiter is five times farther from the sun than Earth). To operate on the sun's light that far out requires solar panels about the size of the cargo section of a typical tractor-trailer you'd see on the interstate highway. Even with all that surface area pointed sunward, all three panels, which are 2.7 meters wide (9 feet), by 8.9 meters long (29 feet), will only generate about enough juice to power five standard light bulbs -- about 450 watts of electricity. If the arrays were optimized to operate at Earth, they would produce 12 to 14 kilowatts of power.
In other recent events, the 106-foot-long (32-meter-long), 12.5-foot-wide (3.8-meter-wide) first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle that will carry Juno into space arrived at the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 24, aboard the world's second largest cargo aircraft -- a Volga-Dnepr Antonov AN-124-100. The two-stage Atlas V, along with the five solid rocket boosters that ring the first stage, will be assembled and tested on site at Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral this summer.
The launch period for Juno opens Aug. 5, 2011, and extends through Aug. 26. For an Aug. 5 liftoff, the launch window opens at 8:39 a.m. PDT (11:39 am EDT) and remains open through 9:39 a.m. PDT (12:39 p.m. EDT).
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno .
You can learn more about the Juno mission to Jupiter by logging on to the mission's new website. The new site was created by Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton in conjunction with Radical Media of New York. "It is one-stop shopping for anyone who wants to be entertained as much as informed about space science and the upcoming Juno mission," said Bolton. This Juno website can be found at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu .
For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-164
A team of NASA-funded researchers has measured for the first time water from the moon in the form of tiny globules of molten rock, which have turned to glass-like material trapped within crystals. Data from these newly-discovered lunar melt inclusions indicate the water content of lunar magma is 100 times higher than previous studies suggested.
The inclusions were found in lunar sample 74220, the famous high-titanium "orange glass soil" of volcanic origin collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The scientific team used a state-of-the-art ion microprobe instrument to measure the water content of the inclusions, which were formed during explosive eruptions on the moon approximately 3.7 billion years ago.
The results, published in the May 26 issue of Science Express, raise questions about aspects of the "giant impact theory" of how the moon was created. That theory predicted very low water content of lunar rock due to catastrophic degassing during the collision of Earth with a Mars-sized body very early in its history. The study also provides additional scientific justification for returning similar samples from other planetary bodies in the solar system.
"Water plays a critical role in determining the tectonic behavior of planetary surfaces, the melting point of planetary interiors and the location and eruptive style of planetary volcanoes," said Erik Hauri, a geochemist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and lead author of the study. "I can conceive of no sample type that would be more important to return to Earth than these volcanic glass samples ejected by explosive volcanism, which have been mapped not only on the moon but throughout the inner solar system."
In contrast to most volcanic deposits, the lunar melt inclusions are encased in crystals that prevent the escape of water and other volatiles during eruption.
"These samples provide the best window we have on the amount of water in the interior of the moon where the orange glass came from," said science team member James Van Orman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
In a 2008 study led by Alberto Saal of Brown University in Providence, R.I., the same team reported the first evidence of water in lunar volcanic glasses. They used magma degassing models to estimate how much water was originally in the magmas before eruption. Building on that study, Thomas Weinreich, a Brown undergraduate student, searched for and found the melt inclusions. With that data, the team measured the pre-eruption concentration in the magma and estimated the amount of water in the moon's interior.
"The bottom line is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to lavas coming from the Earth's depleted upper mantle," Saal said. "Now, we have proven that is indeed the case."
The study also puts a new twist on the origin of water-ice detected in craters at the lunar poles by several recent NASA missions. The ice has been attributed to comet and meteor impacts, but the researchers believe it is possible that some of the ice came from water released by the eruption of lunar magmas eons ago.
The paper entitled, "High Pre-Eruptive Water Contents Preserved in Lunar Melt Inclusions," was written by Hauri, Weinreich, Saal, Van Oman and Malcolm Rutherford of Brown. The research is funded by NASA's Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research and Cosmochemistry Programs in Washington, the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at the agency's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and the Astrobiology Institute at Ames.
The NLSI is a virtual organization enabling collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of agency lunar science programs. The researchers are members of NLSI teams from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and Brown. The institute uses technology to bring scientists together around the world, and it is comprised of seven competitively selected U.S. teams and several international partners. NASA's Science Mission and Exploration Systems Mission Directorates in Washington fund the institute.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/moon_water.html
The inclusions were found in lunar sample 74220, the famous high-titanium "orange glass soil" of volcanic origin collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The scientific team used a state-of-the-art ion microprobe instrument to measure the water content of the inclusions, which were formed during explosive eruptions on the moon approximately 3.7 billion years ago.
The results, published in the May 26 issue of Science Express, raise questions about aspects of the "giant impact theory" of how the moon was created. That theory predicted very low water content of lunar rock due to catastrophic degassing during the collision of Earth with a Mars-sized body very early in its history. The study also provides additional scientific justification for returning similar samples from other planetary bodies in the solar system.
"Water plays a critical role in determining the tectonic behavior of planetary surfaces, the melting point of planetary interiors and the location and eruptive style of planetary volcanoes," said Erik Hauri, a geochemist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington and lead author of the study. "I can conceive of no sample type that would be more important to return to Earth than these volcanic glass samples ejected by explosive volcanism, which have been mapped not only on the moon but throughout the inner solar system."
In contrast to most volcanic deposits, the lunar melt inclusions are encased in crystals that prevent the escape of water and other volatiles during eruption.
"These samples provide the best window we have on the amount of water in the interior of the moon where the orange glass came from," said science team member James Van Orman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
In a 2008 study led by Alberto Saal of Brown University in Providence, R.I., the same team reported the first evidence of water in lunar volcanic glasses. They used magma degassing models to estimate how much water was originally in the magmas before eruption. Building on that study, Thomas Weinreich, a Brown undergraduate student, searched for and found the melt inclusions. With that data, the team measured the pre-eruption concentration in the magma and estimated the amount of water in the moon's interior.
"The bottom line is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to lavas coming from the Earth's depleted upper mantle," Saal said. "Now, we have proven that is indeed the case."
The study also puts a new twist on the origin of water-ice detected in craters at the lunar poles by several recent NASA missions. The ice has been attributed to comet and meteor impacts, but the researchers believe it is possible that some of the ice came from water released by the eruption of lunar magmas eons ago.
The paper entitled, "High Pre-Eruptive Water Contents Preserved in Lunar Melt Inclusions," was written by Hauri, Weinreich, Saal, Van Oman and Malcolm Rutherford of Brown. The research is funded by NASA's Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research and Cosmochemistry Programs in Washington, the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at the agency's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and the Astrobiology Institute at Ames.
The NLSI is a virtual organization enabling collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of agency lunar science programs. The researchers are members of NLSI teams from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and Brown. The institute uses technology to bring scientists together around the world, and it is comprised of seven competitively selected U.S. teams and several international partners. NASA's Science Mission and Exploration Systems Mission Directorates in Washington fund the institute.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/moon_water.html
NASA will launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016 and use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system's formation and how life began. The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth.
"This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. "It’s robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations."
NASA selected OSIRIS-REx after reviewing three concept study reports for new scientific missions, which also included a sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and a mission to the surface of Venus.
Asteroids are leftovers formed from the cloud of gas and dust -- the solar nebula -- that collapsed to form our sun and the planets about 4.5 billion years ago. As such, they contain the original material from the solar nebula, which can tell us about the conditions of our solar system's birth.
After traveling four years, OSIRIS-REx will approach the primitive, near Earth asteroid designated 1999 RQ36 in 2020. Once within three miles of the asteroid, the spacecraft will begin six months of comprehensive surface mapping. The science team then will pick a location from where the spacecraft's arm will take a sample. The spacecraft gradually will move closer to the site, and the arm will extend to collect more than two ounces of material for return to Earth in 2023. The mission, excluding the launch vehicle, is expected to cost approximately $800 million.
The sample will be stored in a capsule that will land at Utah's Test and Training Range in 2023. The capsule's design will be similar to that used by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which returned the world's first comet particles from comet Wild 2 in 2006. The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The material will be removed and delivered to a dedicated research facility following stringent planetary protection protocol. Precise analysis will be performed that cannot be duplicated by spacecraft-based instruments.
RQ36 is approximately 1,900 feet in diameter or roughly the size of five football fields. The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating some of life's ingredients can be created in space. Scientists want to see if they also are present on RQ36.
"This asteroid is a time capsule from the birth of our solar system and ushers in a new era of planetary exploration," said Jim Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "The knowledge from the mission also will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids."
The mission will accurately measure the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The effect is a small push caused by the sun on an asteroid, as it absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat. The small push adds up over time, but it is uneven due to an asteroid's shape, wobble, surface composition and rotation. For scientists to predict an Earth-approaching asteroid's path, they must understand how the effect will change its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will help refine RQ36's orbit to ascertain its trajectory and devise future strategies to mitigate possible Earth impacts from celestial objects.
Michael Drake of the University of Arizona in Tucson is the mission's principal investigator. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx payload includes instruments from the University of Arizona, Goddard, Arizona State University in Tempe and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the Langley Research Center in Hampton Va., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., also are involved. The science team is composed of numerous researchers from universities, private and government agencies.
This is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006. It will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in July 2015, then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, Juno, will launch in August to become the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole and study the giant planet's atmosphere and interior. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/osiris-rex.html
"This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. "It’s robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations."
NASA selected OSIRIS-REx after reviewing three concept study reports for new scientific missions, which also included a sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and a mission to the surface of Venus.
Asteroids are leftovers formed from the cloud of gas and dust -- the solar nebula -- that collapsed to form our sun and the planets about 4.5 billion years ago. As such, they contain the original material from the solar nebula, which can tell us about the conditions of our solar system's birth.
After traveling four years, OSIRIS-REx will approach the primitive, near Earth asteroid designated 1999 RQ36 in 2020. Once within three miles of the asteroid, the spacecraft will begin six months of comprehensive surface mapping. The science team then will pick a location from where the spacecraft's arm will take a sample. The spacecraft gradually will move closer to the site, and the arm will extend to collect more than two ounces of material for return to Earth in 2023. The mission, excluding the launch vehicle, is expected to cost approximately $800 million.
The sample will be stored in a capsule that will land at Utah's Test and Training Range in 2023. The capsule's design will be similar to that used by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which returned the world's first comet particles from comet Wild 2 in 2006. The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The material will be removed and delivered to a dedicated research facility following stringent planetary protection protocol. Precise analysis will be performed that cannot be duplicated by spacecraft-based instruments.
RQ36 is approximately 1,900 feet in diameter or roughly the size of five football fields. The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating some of life's ingredients can be created in space. Scientists want to see if they also are present on RQ36.
"This asteroid is a time capsule from the birth of our solar system and ushers in a new era of planetary exploration," said Jim Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "The knowledge from the mission also will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids."
The mission will accurately measure the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The effect is a small push caused by the sun on an asteroid, as it absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat. The small push adds up over time, but it is uneven due to an asteroid's shape, wobble, surface composition and rotation. For scientists to predict an Earth-approaching asteroid's path, they must understand how the effect will change its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will help refine RQ36's orbit to ascertain its trajectory and devise future strategies to mitigate possible Earth impacts from celestial objects.
Michael Drake of the University of Arizona in Tucson is the mission's principal investigator. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx payload includes instruments from the University of Arizona, Goddard, Arizona State University in Tempe and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the Langley Research Center in Hampton Va., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., also are involved. The science team is composed of numerous researchers from universities, private and government agencies.
This is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006. It will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in July 2015, then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, Juno, will launch in August to become the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole and study the giant planet's atmosphere and interior. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/osiris-rex.html
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