Tag Archives: Gale Crater

NASA News Digest: Space Science For 26 March – 6 April 2015

Posted on April 11, 2015 2:19 pm - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:

hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe

NASA Asteroid Hunter Spacecraft Data Available To Public

RELEASE 15-051 (Click here for the full article) – 31 March 2015

15-051_0Millions of images of celestial objects, including asteroids, observed by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft now are available online to the public. The data was collected following the restart of the asteroid-seeking spacecraft in December 2013 after a lengthy hibernation.

The collection of millions of infrared images and billions of infrared measurements of asteroids, stars, galaxies and quasars spans data obtained between December 13, 2013, and December 13, 2014.

“One of the most satisfying things about releasing these cutting-edge astronomical data to the public is seeing what other exciting and creative projects the scientific community does with them,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEOWISE at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California.

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To view the NEOWISE data, visit: wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/

For more information about NEOWISE, visit: www.nasa.gov/neowise

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at available online at: www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

For more information about the Asteroid Redirect Mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

Curiosity Sniffs Out History Of Martian Atmosphere

RELEASE 15-055 (Click here for the full article) – 31 March 2015

15-055NASA’s Curiosity rover is using a new experiment to better understand the history of the Martian atmosphere by analyzing xenon.

While NASA’s Curiosity rover concluded its detailed examination of the rock layers of the “Pahrump Hills” in Gale Crater on Mars this winter, some members of the rover team were busy analyzing the Martian atmosphere for xenon, a heavy noble gas.

Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) experiment analyzed xenon in the planet’s atmosphere. Since noble gases are chemically inert and do not react with other substances in the air or on the ground, they are excellent tracers of the history of the atmosphere. Xenon is present in the Martian atmosphere at a challengingly low quantity and can be directly measured only with on-site experiments such as SAM.

“Xenon is a fundamental measurement to make on a planet such as Mars or Venus, since it provides essential information to understand the early history of these planets and why they turned out so differently from Earth,” said Melissa Trainer, one of the scientists analyzing the SAM data.

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For more information about SAM, visit: ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/sam/

SAM experiment data are archived in the Planetary Data System, online at: pds.nasa.gov/

For more information about Curiosity, visit: www.nasa.gov/msl

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission Passes Critical Milestone

RELEASE 15-056 (Click here for the full article) – 31 March 2015

15-056NASA’s groundbreaking science mission to retrieve a sample from an ancient space rock has moved closer to fruition. The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has passed a critical milestone in its path towards launch and is officially authorized to transition into its next phase.

Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) occurs after the project has completed a series of independent reviews that cover the technical health, schedule and cost of the project. The milestone represents the official transition from the mission’s development stage to delivery of systems, testing and integration leading to launch. During this part of the mission’s life cycle, known as Phase D, the spacecraft bus, or the structure that will carry the science instruments, is completed, the instruments are integrated into the spacecraft and tested, and the spacecraft is shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration with the rocket.

“This is an exciting time for the OSIRIS-REx team,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-Rex at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “After almost four years of intense design efforts, we are now proceeding with the start of flight system assembly. I am grateful for the hard work and team effort required to get us to this point.”

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For more information about the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex and asteroidmission.org

For more information about the ARM and NASA’s Asteroid Initiative, visit: www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

NASA Celebrates Earth Day With #NoPlaceLikeHome Event

RELEASE 15-055 (Click here for the full article) – 6 April 2015

m15-055_0This Earth Day, April 22, NASA is asking people around the world to share pictures and videos on social media that show there is no place like home – planet Earth.

NASA’s Earth Day #NoPlaceLikeHome project seeks to get the public involved in highlighting the great diversity of the places, landscapes and ecosystems of our home planet. Participants are invited to post photos and videos that answer a simple question: What is your favorite place on Earth?

Images can be shared using the hashtag #NoPlaceLikeHome on Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. Leading up to Earth Day, NASA will participate by posting its own images and videos.

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For more information on the #NoPlaceLikeHome project, visit: www.nasa.gov/likehome

NASA Extends Campaign For Public To Name Features On Pluto

RELEASE 15-060 (Click here for the full article) – 6 April 2015

nh-pluto-approaches-charonThe public has until Friday, April 24 to help name new features on Pluto and its orbiting satellites as they are discovered by NASA’s New Horizons mission.

Announced in March, the agency wants to give the worldwide public more time to participate in the agency’s mission to Pluto that will make the first-ever close flyby of the dwarf planet on July 14.

The campaign extension, in partnership with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Paris, was due to the overwhelming response from the public.

“Due to increasing interest and the number of submissions we’re getting, it was clear we needed to extend this public outreach activity,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This campaign not only reveals the public’s excitement about the mission, but helps the team, which will not have time to come up with names during the flyby, to have a ready-made library of names in advance to officially submit to the IAU.”

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To find out more information about how to participate in the Pluto naming contest, visit: www.nasa.gov/newhorizons

Detailed IAU guidelines for acceptable names submissions are available online at: www.iau.org/public/themes/naming/#dwarfplanets

For images and updates on the July 14 Pluto flyby, visit: www.nasa.gov/newhorizons and pluto.jhuapl.edu

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NASA News Digest: Space Science For 27 October – 5 December 2014

Posted on December 14, 2014 2:12 pm - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:

hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe

NASA’S Chandra Observatory Identifies Impact of Cosmic Chaos on Star Birth

RELEASE 14-296 (Click here for the full article) – 27 October 2014

2014dec14_14_296The same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars’ birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity. These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies that are immersed in gas with temperatures of millions of degrees.

This hot gas, which is the heftiest component of the galaxy clusters aside from unseen dark matter, glows brightly in X-ray light detected by Chandra. Over time, the gas in the centers of these clusters should cool enough that stars form at prodigious rates. However, this is not what astronomers have observed in many galaxy clusters.
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An interactive image, podcast, and video about these findings are available at: chandra.si.edu
For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: www.nasa.gov/chandra

NASA Rocket Experiment Finds the Universe Brighter Than We Thought

RELEASE 14-310 (Click here for the full article) – 6 November 2014

2014dec14_14_310A NASA sounding rocket experiment has detected a surprising surplus of infrared light in the dark space between galaxies, a diffuse cosmic glow as bright as all known galaxies combined. The glow is thought to be from orphaned stars flung out of galaxies.

The findings redefine what scientists think of as galaxies. Galaxies may not have a set boundary of stars, but instead stretch out to great distances, forming a vast, interconnected sea of stars.

Observations from the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment, or CIBER, are helping settle a debate on whether this background infrared light in the universe, previously detected by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, comes from these streams of stripped stars too distant to be seen individually, or alternatively from the first galaxies to form in the universe.
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For more information on NASA’s sounding rocket experiments, visit:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sounding-rockets/
For more information about CIBER, visit: ciber.caltech.edu/rocket.html

Mars Spacecraft Reveal Comet Flyby Effects on Martian Atmosphere

RELEASE 14-311 (Click here for the full article) – 7 November 2014

2014dec14_14_311Two NASA and one European spacecraft that obtained the first up-close observations of a comet flyby of Mars on Oct. 19, have gathered new information about the basic properties of the comet’s nucleus and directly detected the effects on the Martian atmosphere.

Data from observations carried out by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and a radar instrument on the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Mars Express spacecraft have revealed that debris from the comet added a temporary and very strong layer of ions to the ionosphere, the electrically charged layer high above Mars. In these observations, scientists were able to make a direct connection from the input of debris from a specific meteor shower to the formation of this kind of transient layer in response; that is a first on any planet, including Earth.
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For more information about NASA’s Mars missions, visit: www.nasa.gov/mars

NASA’s New Orion Spacecraft Completes First Spaceflight Test

RELEASE 14-325 (Click here for the full article) – 5 December 2014

2014dec14_14_325NASA marked a major milestone Friday on its journey to Mars as the Orion spacecraft completed its first voyage to space, traveling farther than any spacecraft designed for astronauts has been in more than 40 years.

“Today’s flight test of Orion is a huge step for NASA and a really critical part of our work to pioneer deep space on our Journey to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “The teams did a tremendous job putting Orion through its paces in the real environment it will endure as we push the boundary of human exploration in the coming years.”
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For more information about Orion, its flight test and the Journey to Mars, visit: www.nasa.gov/orion and go.nasa.gov/1pVQu0S

NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope Reveals New Source of Gamma Rays

RELEASE 14-326 (Click here for the full article) – 8 December 2014

2014dec14_14_326Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars’ Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.

This interpretation of Curiosity’s finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet.

“If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “A more radical explanation is that Mars’ ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don’t know how the atmosphere did that.”
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For more information about Curiosity, visit: www.nasa.gov/msl and mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: facebook.com/marscuriosity and twitter.com/marscuriosity

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NASA News Digest: Space Science For 23 June – 10 July 2014

Posted on July 10, 2014 6:13 pm - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:

hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe

NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover Marks First Martian Year with Mission Successes

RELEASE 14-177 (Click here for the full article) – 23 June 2014

2014july10_14_177_0_smallNASA’s Mars Curiosity rover will complete a Martian year — 687 Earth days — on June 24, having accomplished the mission’s main goal of determining whether Mars once offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

One of Curiosity’s first major findings after landing on the Red Planet in August 2012 was an ancient riverbed at its landing site. Nearby, at an area known as Yellowknife Bay, the mission met its main goal of determining whether the Martian Gale Crater ever was habitable for simple life forms. The answer, a historic “yes,” came from two mudstone slabs that the rover sampled with its drill. Analysis of these samples revealed the site was once a lakebed with mild water, the essential elemental ingredients for life, and a type of chemical energy source used by some microbes on Earth. If Mars had living organisms, this would have been a good home for them. 
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For more information about Curiosity, visit:
www.nasa.gov/msl and mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the mission on Facebook at:
www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.

Ocean on Saturn Moon Could be as Salty as the Dead Sea

RELEASE 14-185 (Click here for the full article) – 2 July 2014

2014july10_dead_sea_titan_oceanandice_main_0_smallScientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as the Earth’s Dead Sea.

The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini’s repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years. Using the Cassini data, researchers presented a model structure for Titan, resulting in an improved understanding of the structure of the moon’s outer ice shell. The findings are published in this week’s edition of the journal Icarus.
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For more information about Cassini, visit www.nasa.gov/cassini and saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Testing Completed on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Backplane

RELEASE 14-178 (Click here for the full article) – 8 July 2014

2014july10_14_178_smallNASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached another development milestone with the completion of static load testing of its primary mirror backplane support structure (PMBSS) moving the telescope one step closer to its 2018 launch.

The PMBSS is the stable platform that holds the telescope’s science instruments and the 18 beryllium mirror-segments that form the 21-foot-diameter primary mirror nearly motionless while the telescope peers into deep space. The primary mirror is the largest mirror in the telescope — the one starlight will hit first.
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For more information about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, visit: www.nasa.gov/webb

Hubble Spots Spiral Bridge of Young Stars Linking Two Ancient Galaxies

RELEASE 14-188 (Click here for the full article) – 10 July 2014

2014july10_14_188_0_smallNASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed an unusual structure 100,000 light years long, which resembles a corkscrew-shaped string of pearls and winds around the cores of two colliding galaxies.

The unique structure of the star spiral may yield new insights into the formation of stellar superclusters that result from merging galaxies and gas dynamics in this rarely seen process.

“We were surprised to find this stunning morphology. We’ve long known that the ‘beads on a string’ phenomenon is seen in the arms of spiral galaxies and in tidal bridges between interacting galaxies. However, this particular supercluster arrangement has never been seen before in giant merging elliptical galaxies,” said Grant Tremblay of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany.
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For images and more information about Hubble, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble and hubblesite.org/news/2014/26.

To learn more about gravitational lensing, visit: go.nasa.gov/1pUWl6f

NASA Spacecraft Observes Further Evidence of Dry Ice Gullies on Mars

RELEASE 14-191 (Click here for the full article) – 10 July 2014

2014july10_14_191_0_smallRepeated high-resolution observations made by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) indicate the gullies on Mars’ surface are primarily formed by the seasonal freezing of carbon dioxide, not liquid water.

The first reports of formative gullies on Mars in 2000 generated excitement and headlines because they suggested the presence of liquid water on the Red Planet, the eroding action of which forms gullies here on Earth. Mars has water vapor and plenty of frozen water, but the presence of liquid water on the neighboring planet, a necessity for all known life, has not been confirmed. This latest report about gullies has been posted online by the journal Icarus.
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For more information about HiRISE, visit: hirise.lpl.arizona.edu

Additional information about MRO is online at: www.nasa.gov/mro

For recent findings suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars, visit: go.nasa.gov/1q1VRLS

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