NASA's Dawn spacecraft is maneuvering to its lowest-ever orbit for a close-up examination of the inner solar system's only dwarf planet.
In early June, Dawn will reach its new, final orbit above Ceres. Soon after, it will begin collecting images and other science data from an unprecedented vantage point. This orbit will be less than 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the surface of Ceres -- 10 times closer than the spacecraft has ever been.
Dawn will collect gamma ray and neutron spectra, which help scientists understand variations in the chemical makeup of Ceres' uppermost layer. That very low orbit also will garner some of Dawn's closest images yet.
The transfer from Dawn's previous orbit to its final one is not as simple as making a lane change. Dawn's operations team worked for months to plot the course for this second extended mission of the veteran spacecraft, which is propelled by an ion engine. Engineers mapped out more than 45,000 possible trajectories before devising a plan that will allow the best science observations.
Dawn was launched in 2007 and has been exploring the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres, to uncover new insights into our solar system. It entered Ceres' orbit in March 2015.
"The team is eagerly awaiting the detailed composition and high-resolution imaging from the new, up-close examination," said Dawn's Principal Investigator Carol Raymond of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "These new high-resolution data allow us to test theories formulated from the previous data sets and discover new features of this fascinating dwarf planet."
More detailed information about Dawn's planned orbit is in Marc Rayman's Dawn Journal. Rayman is Dawn's mission director and chief engineer.
More information about the Dawn mission is available at the following sites:
The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. JPL is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.
For a complete list of mission participants, visit:
NASA has selected 304 proposals from U.S. small businesses to advance research and technology in Phase I of its 2018 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and 44 proposals for the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, totaling $43.5 million in awards. These selections support NASA's future space exploration missions, while also benefiting the U.S. economy.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will manage 45 SBIR and four STTR awards, totaling $6.125 million.
"This round of Phase I ideas looks very promising and creative, and will enhance innovation throughout the Agency," said Jim Reuter, acting associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). "Many of the businesses that go through the SBIR program end up working with NASA on the research and technologies needed to advance our space exploration goals."
Proposals were selected according to their technical merit and feasibility, in addition to the experience, qualifications and facilities of the submitting organization. Additional criteria included effectiveness of the work plan and commercial potential.
The selected proposals will support the development of technologies in the areas of aeronautics, human space exploration and operations, science, and space technology.
The SBIR Phase I contracts last for six months and STTR Phase I contracts last for 13 months, both with a maximum funding of $125,000.
Phase I work and results provide a sound basis for the continued development, demonstration and delivery of the proposed innovation in Phase II and follow-on efforts. Phase III is the commercialization of innovative technologies, products and services resulting from either a Phase I or Phase II contract.
The SBIR and STTR programs encourage small businesses and research institutions to develop innovative ideas that meet the specific research and development needs of the federal government. The programs are intended to stimulate technological innovation in the private sector, increase the commercial application of research results, and encourage participation of socially and economically disadvantaged persons and women-owned small businesses. Since the 1970s, small businesses have created approximately 55 percent of all jobs in the United States.
The SBIR and STTR programs are managed for STMD by NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. STMD is responsible for developing the cross-cutting, pioneering new technologies and capabilities needed by the agency to achieve its current and future missions.
For more information about the SBIR/STTR program, including the selection list, visit:
NASA invites media to learn the latest about its national campaign to test and refine its Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) technologies at 10 a.m. PDT Wednesday, June 6, at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.
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Are you looking for an exotic destination to visit this summer? Why not take a virtual trip to an Earth-size planet beyond our solar system with NASA's interactive Exoplanet Travel Bureau?
We live in a universe teeming with exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. Unfortunately, even the nearest exoplanets are light-years away, so sending spacecraft and humans to these intriguing worlds remains a distant dream.
But on NASA's Exoplanet Exploration website, you can explore an imagined surface of an alien world via 360-degree, interactive visualizations. As you investigate each planet's surface, you'll discover fascinating features, like the blood-red sky of TRAPPIST-1d, or stand on a hypothetical moon of the massive planet Kepler-16b, which appears larger than either of the planet's two suns. The view from each planet's surface is an artist's impression based on the limited data that is available; no real photos of these planets exist.
The newest planet to feature this 360-degree surface visualization is Kepler-186f, an Earth-size planet orbiting a star much cooler and redder than the Sun. Scientists don't know if Kepler-186f has an atmosphere, but with the NASA visualization tool, you can see how the presence or absence of an atmosphere would change the view of the sky from the planet's surface.
The imagined surface of exoplanet Kepler-186f, on NASA's interactive Exoplanet Exploration website. Kepler-186f is an Earth-size planet orbiting a small red star, which may or may not have an atmosphere. No real photos of Kepler-186f exist. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Many of the exoplanets featured on the Exoplanet Exploration website were discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope.
"Because Kepler-186f and the majority of Kepler-discovered planets are so distant, it is currently impossible to detect their atmospheres -- if they exist at all -- or characterize their atmospheric properties," said Martin Still, program scientist for NASA's newest space-based planet-hunting observatory, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
"Consequently, we have limited knowledge about what these distant worlds are really like, but these surface visualizations allow us to imagine some of the possibilities," Still said. "Current and future NASA missions, including TESS and the James Webb Space Telescope, will find the nearest exoplanets to our solar system and characterize their atmospheres, bridging the gap between speculation and what's really out there."
All the 360-degree visualizations are viewable on desktop and mobile devices, or in virtual reality headsets that work with smartphones. You can also peruse travelposters of such distant worlds as Kepler 186f; TRAPPIST-1e, or PSO J318.5-22, where the "nightlife never ends" because the planet doesn't orbit a star, but is instead floating freely through space.
Many exoplanets share characteristics with the planets that orbit our Sun -- some are gaseous like Saturn and Jupiter, while others are rocky like Earth and Mars. But these alien worlds also have unique features that set them apart. NASA is helping scientists discover and learn about these alien worlds with multiple telescopes and observatories, both on the ground and in space. For even more information and visualizations of these alien worlds, check out NASA's Eyes on Exoplanets mobile app.
The Exoplanet Travel Bureau was developed by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program communications team and program chief scientists. Based at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is a division of Caltech, the program is NASA's search for habitable planets and life beyond our solar system. The program develops technology and mission concepts, maintains exoplanet data archives and conducts ground-based exoplanet science for NASA missions.
A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the globe by the end of this century, while slightly reducing their number.
The new study projects atmospheric rivers will be significantly longer and wider than the ones we observe today, leading to more frequent atmospheric river conditions in affected areas.
"The results project that in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, there will be about 10 percent fewer atmospheric rivers globally by the end of the 21st century," said the study's lead author, Duane Waliser, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "However, because the findings project that the atmospheric rivers will be, on average, about 25 percent wider and longer, the global frequency of atmospheric river conditions -- like heavy rain and strong winds -- will actually increase by about 50 percent."
The results also show that the frequency of the most intense atmospheric river storms is projected to nearly double.
Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow jets of air that carry huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics to Earth's continents and polar regions. These "rivers in the sky" typically range from 250 to 375 miles (400 to 600 kilometers) wide and carry as much water -- in the form of water vapor -- as about 25 Mississippi Rivers. When an atmospheric river makes landfall, particularly against mountainous terrain (such as the Sierra Nevada and the Andes), it releases much of that water vapor in the form of rain or snow.
These storm systems are common -- on average, there are about 11 present on Earth at any time. In many areas of the globe, they bring much-needed precipitation and are an important contribution to annual freshwater supplies. However, stronger atmospheric rivers -- especially those that stall at landfall or that produce rain on top of snowpack -- can cause disastrous flooding.
Atmospheric rivers show up on satellite imagery, including in data from a series of actual atmospheric river storms that drenched the U.S. West Coast and caused severe flooding in early 2017.
The Study
Climate change studies on atmospheric rivers to date have been mostly limited to two specific regions, the western United States and Europe. They have typically used different methodologies for identifying atmospheric rivers and different climate projection models -- meaning results from one are not quantitatively comparable to another.
The team sought to provide a more streamlined and global approach to evaluating the effects of climate change on atmospheric river storms.
The study relied on two resources -- a set of commonly used global climate model projections for the 21st century developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment report, and a global atmospheric river detection algorithm that can be applied to climate model output. The algorithm, developed earlier by members of the study team, identifies atmospheric river events from every day of the model simulations, quantifying their length, width and how much water vapor they transport.
The team applied the atmospheric river detection algorithm to both actual observations and model simulations for the late 20th century. Comparing the data showed that the models produced a relatively realistic representation of atmospheric rivers for the late 20th century climate.
They then applied the algorithm to model projections of climate in the late 21st century. In doing this, they were able to compare the frequency and characteristics of atmospheric rivers for the current climate with the projections for future climate.
The team also tested the algorithm with a different climate model scenario that assumed more conservative increases in the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. They found similar, though less drastic changes. Together, the consideration of the two climate scenarios indicates a direct link between the extent of warming and the frequency and severity of atmospheric river conditions.
What does this mean?
The significance of the study is two-fold.
First, "knowing the nature of how these atmospheric river events might change with future climate conditions allows for scientists, water managers, stakeholders and citizens living in atmospheric river-prone regions [e.g. western N. America, western S. America, S. Africa, New Zealand, western Europe] to consider the potential implications that might come with a change to these extreme precipitation events," said Vicky Espinoza, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-Merced and first author of the study.
And secondly, the study and its approach provide a much-needed, uniform way to research atmospheric rivers on a global level -- illustrating a foundation to analyze and compare them that did not previously exist.
Limitations
Data across the models are generally consistent -- all support the projection that atmospheric river conditions are linked to warming and will increase in the future; however, co-author Marty Ralph of the University of California, San Diego, points out that there is still work to be done.
"While all the models project increases in the frequency of atmospheric river conditions, the results also illustrate uncertainties in the details of the climate projections of this key phenomenon," he said. "This highlights the need to better understand why the models' representations of atmospheric rivers vary."
The study, titled "Global Analysis of Climate Change Projection Effects on Atmospheric Rivers," was recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
News Media Contact
Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0474
Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov
Written by Esprit Smith
JPL Media Relations
2018-116
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NASA astronauts Christina Hammock Koch and Andrew Morgan have been assigned to spaceflights scheduled to launch in 2019. Both Koch and Morgan were selected as NASA astronauts in 2013.
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Engineers working with NASA's Curiosity Mars rover have been hard at work testing a new way for the rover to drill rocks and extract powder from them. This past weekend, that effort produced the first drilled sample on Mars in more than a year.
Curiosity tested percussive drilling this past weekend, penetrating about 2 inches (50 millimeters) into a target called "Duluth."
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been testing this drilling technique since a mechanical problem took Curiosity's drill offline in December of 2016. This technique, called Feed Extended Drilling, keeps the drill's bit extended out past two stabilizer posts that were originally used to steady the drill against Martian rocks. It lets Curiosity drill using the force of its robotic arm, a little more like the way a human would drill into a wall at home.
"The team used tremendous ingenuity to devise a new drilling technique and implement it on another planet," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Steve Lee of JPL. "Those are two vital inches of innovation from 60 million miles away. We're thrilled that the result was so successful."
Drilling is a vitally important part of Curiosity's capabilities to study Mars. Inside the rover are two laboratories that are able to conduct chemical and mineralogical analyses of rock and soil samples. The samples are acquired from Gale Crater, which the rover has been exploring since 2012.
Curiosity's science team has been eager to get the drill working before the rover leaves its current location near Vera Rubin Ridge. Fortunately, it was near enough to drill targets like Duluth to drive back down the ridge. Sunday's drill sample represents a quick taste of the region before Curiosity moves on.
Demonstrating that Curiosity's percussive drilling technique works is a milestone in itself. But that doesn't mean the work is over for engineers at JPL.
"We've been developing this new drilling technique for over a year, but our job isn't done once a sample has been collected on Mars," JPL's Tom Green, a systems engineer who helped develop and test Curiosity's new drilling method. "With each new test, we closely examine the data to look for improvements we can make and then head back to our testbed to iterate on the process."
There's also the next step to work on: delivering the rock sample from the drill bit to the two laboratories inside the rover. Having captured enough powder inside the drill, engineers will now use the rover's cameras to estimate how much trickles out while running the drill backwards. The drill's percussion mechanism is also used to tap out powder.
As soon as this Friday, the Curiosity team will test a new process for delivering samples into the rover's laboratories.
Twin satellites that will monitor Earth's water cycle are scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California on Tuesday, May 22, in a unique rideshare arrangement. The two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On mission (GRACE-FO) spacecraft will join five Iridium NEXT communications satellites as the payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Liftoff from Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 4E is targeted for 12:47:39 p.m. PDT (3:47:39 p.m. EDT), with an instantaneous launch window. If needed, an additional launch opportunity is available on Wednesday, May 23.
GRACE-FO, a collaborative mission of NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), continues the work of the original GRACE mission in observing the movement of water and other mass around our planet by tracking the changing pull of gravity very precisely.
Launch Timeline
On liftoff, the Falcon 9 first-stage engines will burn for approximately 2 minutes and 45 seconds before shutting down at main engine cutoff (MECO). The Falcon 9's first and second stages will separate seconds later. Then, the second-stage engine will ignite for the first time (SES1) and burn until the vehicle reaches the altitude of the injection orbit, 305 miles (490 kilometers).
While this burn is going on, the payload fairing -- the launch vehicle's nose cone - will separate into two halves like a clamshell and fall away.
When the rocket's second stage has completed its ascent to the injection orbit altitude, it will pitch down (its nose points down) 30 degrees and roll so that one of the twin GRACE-FO satellites is facing down, toward Earth, and the other is facing up, toward space. Then the second stage engine will cut off (SECO).
About 10 minutes after liftoff, a separation system on the second stage will deploy the GRACE-FO satellites. Separation will occur over the Pacific Ocean at about 17.5 degrees North latitude, 122.6 degrees West longitude. The first opportunity to receive data from the spacecraft will occur at NASA's tracking station at McMurdo, Antarctica, about 23 minutes after separation.
After the GRACE-FO satellites are deployed, the Falcon 9 second stage will coast for half an orbit before reigniting its engine (SES2) to take the Iridium NEXT satellites to a higher orbit for deployment.
From Deployment to Science Separation Distance
At deployment, the GRACE-FO satellites will be released from their payload dispenser in opposite directions at a rate of 0.8 to 1 foot per second each (0.25 to 0.30 meters). The Earth-facing satellite will be pushed down into a lower orbit that is faster on average, while the space-facing satellite will be pushed up into a higher orbit that is slower on average.
For the first few days after launch, the lower, faster satellite will pull slowly ahead of the other until the two satellites are approximately 137 miles (220 kilometers) apart -- the optimal separation distance for science operations. Then the lower, leading satellite will be raised into the same orbit as the higher, trailing satellite. This maneuver will keep the two spacecraft from continuing to drift farther apart, so that the two continue to orbit on the same track, one following the other.
Alan Buis Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 818-354-0474 Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov Written by Carol Rasmussen NASA's Earth Science News Team 2018-107
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Students from Pacoima and San Fernando, California, will have the opportunity to talk with astronauts on the International Space Station on Tuesday, May 22, as part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.
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Astronauts soon will have new experiments to conduct related to emergency navigation, DNA sequencing and ultra-cold atom research when the research arrives at the International Space Station following the 4:44 a.m. EDT Monday launch of an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft.
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Media accreditation now is open for the launch of the next SpaceX delivery of NASA science investigations, supplies and equipment to the International Space Station, currently targeted for late June.
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In a
first-of-its-kind study, scientists have combined an array of NASA satellite
observations of Earth with data on human activities to map locations where
freshwater is changing around the globe and why.
The study,
published today in the journal Nature, finds that Earth's wet land areas are
getting wetter and dry areas are getting drier due to a variety of factors,
including human water management, climate change and natural cycles.
Between 2002 and 2016, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) tracked the movement of freshwater around the planet. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Katy Mersmann
A
team led by Matt Rodell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland, used 14 years of observations from the U.S./German-led Gravity
Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft mission to
track global trends in freshwater in 34 regions around the world. To understand
why these trends emerged, they needed to pull in satellite precipitation data
from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project, NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat imagery, irrigation
maps, and published reports of human activities related to agriculture, mining
and reservoir operations. Only through analysis of the combined data sets were
the scientists able to get a full understanding of the reasons for Earth's
freshwater changes, as well as the sizes of those trends.
"This
is the first time that we've used observations from multiple satellites in a
thorough assessment of how freshwater availability is changing everywhere on
Earth," said Rodell. "A key
goal was to distinguish shifts in terrestrial water storage caused by natural
variability -- wet periods and dry periods associated with El Niño and La Niña,
for example -- from trends related to climate change or human impacts, like
pumping groundwater out of an aquifer faster than it is replenished."
Freshwater is
found in lakes, rivers, soil, snow, groundwater and ice. Freshwater loss from
the ice sheets at the poles -- attributed to climate change -- has implications
for sea level rise. On land, freshwater is one of the most essential of Earth's
resources, for drinking water and agriculture. While some regions' water
supplies are relatively stable, others experienced increases or decreases.
"What
we are witnessing is major hydrologic change," said co-author Jay Famiglietti of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which also managed the GRACE mission for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "We see a distinctive pattern of the wet land
areas of the world getting wetter -- those are the high latitudes and the
tropics -- and the dry areas in between getting dryer. Embedded within the dry
areas we see multiple hotspots resulting from groundwater depletion."
Famiglietti noted that while water loss in some
regions, like the melting ice sheets and alpine glaciers, is clearly driven by
warming climate, it will require more time and data to determine the driving
forces behind other patterns of freshwater change.
"The pattern of wet-getting-wetter,
dry-getting-drier during the rest of the 21st century is predicted by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models, but we'll need a much longer
dataset to be able to definitively say whether climate change is responsible
for the emergence of any similar pattern in the GRACE data," Famiglietti
said.
The
twin GRACE satellites, launched in 2002 as a joint mission with the German
Aerospace Center (DLR), precisely measured the distance between the two spacecraft
to detect changes in Earth's gravity field caused by movements of mass on the
planet below. Using this method, GRACE tracked monthly variations in
terrestrial water storage until its science mission ended in October 2017.
However, the GRACE satellite observations alone
couldn't tell Rodell, Famiglietti and their colleagues what was causing the
apparent trends.
"We examined information on precipitation, agriculture and groundwater
pumping to find a possible explanation for the trends estimated from
GRACE," said co-author Hiroko Beaudoing of Goddard and the University of
Maryland in College Park.
For
instance, although pumping groundwater for agricultural uses is a significant
contributor to freshwater depletion throughout the world, groundwater levels
are also sensitive to cycles of persistent drought or rainy conditions.
Famiglietti noted that such a combination was likely the cause of the
significant groundwater depletion observed in California's Central Valley from
2007 to 2015, when decreased groundwater replenishment from rain and snowfall
combined with increased pumping for agriculture.
Southwestern
California lost 4 gigatons of freshwater per year during the period. A gigaton
of water would fill 400,000 Olympic swimming pools. A majority of California's
freshwater comes in the form of rainfall and snow that collect in the Sierra
Nevada snowpack and then is managed as it melts into surface waters through a
series of reservoirs. When natural cycles led to less precipitation and caused
diminished snowpack and surface waters, people relied on groundwater more
heavily.
Downward
trends in freshwater seen in Saudi Arabia also reflect agricultural pressures. From 2002 to 2016, the
region lost 6.1 gigatons per year of stored groundwater. Imagery from Landsat
satellites shows an explosive growth of irrigated farmland in the arid
landscape from 1987 to the present, which may explain the increased drawdown.
The team's
analyses also identified large, decade-long trends in terrestrial freshwater
storage that do not appear to be directly related to human activities. Natural
cycles of high or low rainfall can cause a trend that is unlikely to persist,
Rodell said. An example is Africa's western Zambezi basin and Okavango Delta, a
vital watering hole for wildlife in northern Botswana. In this region, water
storage increased at an average rate of 29 gigatons per year from 2002 to 2016.
This wet period during the GRACE mission followed at least two decades of
dryness. Rodell believes it is a case of natural variability that occurs over
decades in this region of Africa.
The researchers
found that a combination of natural and human pressures can lead to complex
scenarios in some regions. Xinjiang province in northwestern China, about the
size of Kansas, is bordered by Kazakhstan to the west and the Taklamakan desert
to the south and encompasses the central portion of the Tien Shan Mountains.
During the first decades of this century, previously undocumented water
declines occurred in Xinjiang.
Rodell and his
colleagues pieced together multiple factors to explain the loss of 5.5 gigatons
of terrestrial water storage per year in Xinjiang province. Less rainfall was
not the culprit. Additions to surface water were also occurring from climate
change-induced glacier melt, and the pumping of groundwater out of coal mines.
But these additions were more than offset by depletions caused by an increase
in water consumption by irrigated cropland and evaporation of river water from
the desert floor.
The
successor to GRACE, called GRACE Follow-On, a joint mission with
the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), currently is at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California undergoing final preparations for launch no earlier
than May 22.
For more
information on how NASA studies Earth, visit:
Some of the earliest human explorers used mechanical tools called sextants to navigate vast oceans and discover new lands. Today, high-tech tools navigate microscopic DNA to discover previously unidentified organisms. Scientists aboard the International Space Station soon will have both types of tools at their disposal.
Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to launch its ninth contracted cargo resupply mission to the space station no earlier than May 20. Science and research delivered by the spacecraft include a test of centuries-old sextant navigation and forward-thinking work advancing the orbiting lab's ability to support cutting-edge molecular research and its commercial capabilities.
Sextant navigation
For centuries, sailors navigated with sextants, which have an optical sight to take precise angle measurements from land or sea. NASA's Gemini missions conducted the first sextant sightings from a spacecraft, and designers built a sextant into Apollo vehicles as a lost-communications navigation backup. Jim Lovell demonstrated on Apollo 8 that sextant navigation could return a space vehicle home.
The Sextant Navigation investigation tests use of a hand-held sextant for emergency navigation on missions in deep space as humans begin to travel farther from Earth. The ability to sight angles between the moon or planets and stars offers crews another option to find their way home if communications and main computers are compromised.
"No need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to celestial navigation," says Principal Investigator Greg Holt. "We want a robust, mechanical back-up with as few parts and as little need for power as possible to get you back home safely."
Gene sequencing
The remoteness and constrained resources of living in space require simple but effective processes and procedures to monitor the presence of microbial life, some of which might be harmful.
Biomolecule Extraction and Sequencing Technology (BEST) advances the use of sequencing processes to identify microbes aboard the space station that current methods cannot detect and to assess mutations in the microbial genome that may be due to spaceflight.
Genes in Space 3 performed in-flight identification of bacteria on the station for the first time. BEST takes that one step farther, says Principal iInvestigator Sarah Wallace, identifying unknown microbial organisms using a process that sequences directly from a sample with minimal preparation, rather than with the traditional technique that requires growing a culture from the sample. "That way, we can identify microbes that cannot be detected using traditional culturing methods, and we aren't increasing the number of potential pathogens that might be present on the station," Wallace explains.
Adding these new processes to the proven technology opens new avenues for inflight research, such as how microorganisms on the space station change or adapt to spaceflight.
"With small modifications to our process, you can pretty much do any type of sequencing on the station," says Wallace. "Until now, we had to bring samples back to the ground to see these changes. We know gene expression changes, but freezing a sample and bringing it back to the ground could result in alterations that are not caused by the spaceflight environment. If we could look at it while on the station, it might look very different. There is so much to be gained from that real-time snapshot of gene expression. I think it will be key to a lot of research."
The investigation's sequencing components provide important information on the station's microbial occupants, including which organisms are present and how they respond to the spaceflight environment -- insight that could help protect humans during future space exploration. Knowledge gained from BEST could also provide new ways to monitor the presence of microbes in remote locations on Earth.
Keeping cool
Moving on to science at a scale even smaller than a microbe, the new Cold Atom Lab (CAL) facility could help answer some big questions in modern physics. CAL creates a temperature 10 billion times colder than the vacuum of space, then uses lasers and magnetic forces to slow down atoms until they are almost motionless. CAL makes it possible to observe these ultra-cold atoms for much longer in the microgravity environment on the space station than would be possible on the ground. Results of this research could potentially lead to a number of improved technologies, including sensors, quantum computers and atomic clocks used in spacecraft navigation. The Cold Atom Laboratory was designed and built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It is sponsored by the International Space Station Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications (SLPSRA) Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
ICE cubes
The International Commercial Experiment, or ICE Cubes Service, tests and commissions the first European commercial system to increase access to this unique lab. A partnership between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Space Application Services (SpaceAps), ICE Cubes uses a sliding framework permanently installed in the Columbus module and "plug-and-play" Experiment Cubes. The Experiment Cubes are easy to install and remove, come in different sizes and can be built with commercial off-the-shelf components, significantly reducing the cost and time to develop experiments.
"The idea is to provide fast, direct and affordable access to space for research, technology and education for any organization or customer," says Hilde Stenuit of SpaceAps, which designed and developed the facility and made it flight-ready.
ICE Cubes removes barriers that limit access to space, providing more people access to flight opportunities. Potential fields of research range from pharmaceutical development to experiments on stem cells, radiation, and microbiology, fluid sciences, and more.
In a first-of-its-kind study, scientists have combined an array of NASA satellite observations of Earth with data on human activities to map locations where freshwater is changing around the globe and to determine why.
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Media are invited to cover the prelaunch briefing and launch of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO), NASA’s latest Earth-observing satellite mission.
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Asteroid 2010 WC9 will make a close approach to Earth today (5/15/18) at 3:04 p.m. PDT (6:04 p.m. EDT, 22:04 UTC). At the time of closest approach, the asteroid will be no closer to Earth's surface than about 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers), which is about half the distance between Earth and the Moon. 2010 WC9 is about 200 to 400 feet (50 to 120 meters) across. The asteroid's velocity at the time of closest approach will be about 29,000 mph (8 miles per second, 12.8 kilometers per second). This flyby is the closest approach 2010 WC9 will make to Earth for at least two centuries.
Asteroid 2010 WC9 was discovered on Nov. 30, 2010, by the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and was tracked for about 10 days before it faded from view. Orbit calculations in 2010 ruled out any chance that the asteroid could pose a threat to our planet in 2018, but the distance of this year's close approach could not be predicted precisely until the asteroid was detected again last week as it approached our planet once again.
JPL hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, an element of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:
NASA's Voyager 1 took a classic portrait of Earth from several billion miles away in 1990. Now a class of tiny, boxy spacecraft, known as CubeSats, have just taken their own version of a "pale blue dot" image, capturing Earth and its moon in one shot.
NASA set a new distance record for CubeSats on May 8 when a pair of CubeSats called Mars Cube One (MarCO) reached 621,371 miles (1 million kilometers) from Earth. One of the CubeSats, called MarCO-B (and affectionately known as "Wall-E" to the MarCO team) used a fisheye camera to snap its first photo on May 9. That photo is part of the process used by the engineering team to confirm the spacecraft's high-gain antenna has properly unfolded.
As a bonus, it captured Earth and its moon as tiny specks floating in space.
"Consider it our homage to Voyager," said Andy Klesh, MarCO's chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL built the CubeSats and leads the MarCO mission. "CubeSats have never gone this far into space before, so it's a big milestone. Both our CubeSats are healthy and functioning properly. We're looking forward to seeing them travel even farther."
The MarCO spacecraft are the first CubeSats ever launched to deep space. Most never go beyond Earth orbit; they generally stay below 497 miles (800 kilometers) above the planet. Though they were originally developed to teach university students about satellites, CubeSats are now a major commercial technology, providing data on everything from shipping routes to environmental changes.
The MarCO CubeSats were launched on May 5 along with NASA's InSight lander, a spacecraft that will touch down on Mars and study the planet's deep interior for the first time. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will attempt to land on Mars on Nov. 26. JPL also leads the InSight mission.
Mars landings are notoriously challenging due to the Red Planet's thin atmosphere. The MarCO CubeSats will follow along behind InSight during its cruise to Mars. Should they make it all the way to Mars, they will radio back data about InSight while it enters the atmosphere and descends to the planet's surface. The high-gain antennas are key to that effort; the MarCO team have early confirmation that the antennas have successfully deployed, but will continue to test them in the weeks ahead.
InSight won't rely on the MarCO mission for data relay. That job will fall to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. But the MarCOs could be a pathfinder so that future missions can "bring their own relay" to Mars. They could also demonstrate a number of experimental technologies, including their antennas, radios and propulsion systems, which will allow CubeSats to collect science in the future.
Later this month, the MarCOs will attempt the first trajectory correction maneuvers ever performed by CubeSats. This maneuver lets them steer towards Mars, blazing a trail for CubeSats to come.
Scientists re-examining data from an old mission bring new insights to the tantalizing question of whether Jupiter's moon Europa has the ingredients to support life. The data provide independent evidence that the moon's subsurface liquid water reservoir may be venting plumes of water vapor above its icy shell.
Data collected by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in 1997 were put through new and advanced computer models to untangle a mystery -- a brief, localized bend in themagnetic field -- that had gone unexplained until now. Previous ultraviolet images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2012 suggested the presence of plumes, but this new analysis used data collected much closer to the source and is considered strong, corroborating support for plumes. The findings appear in Monday's issue of the journal Nature Astronomy.
New science, mined from the archives. Data from NASA Galileo orbiter launched a generation ago yields new evidence of plumes, eruptions of water vapor, from Jupiter moon Europa.
The research was led by Xianzhe Jia, a space physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and lead author of the journal article. Jia also is co-investigator for two instruments that will travel aboard Europa Clipper, NASA's upcoming mission to explore the moon's potential habitability.
"The data were there, but we needed sophisticated modeling to make sense of the observation," Jia said.
Jia's team was inspired to dive back into the Galileo data by Melissa McGrath of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. A member of the Europa Clipper science team, McGrath delivered a presentation to fellow team scientists, highlighting other Hubble observations of Europa.
"One of the locations she mentioned rang a bell. Galileo actually did a flyby of that location, and it was the closest one we ever had. We realized we had to go back," Jia said. "We needed to see whether there was anything in the data that could tell us whether or not there was a plume."
At the time of the 1997 flyby, about 124 miles (200 kilometers) above Europa's surface, the Galileo team didn't suspect the spacecraft might be grazing a plume erupting from the icy moon. Now, Jia and his team believe, its path was fortuitous.
When they examined the information gathered during that flyby 21 years ago, sure enough, high-resolution magnetometer data showed something strange. Drawing on what scientists learned from exploring plumes on Saturn's moon Enceladus -- that material in plumes becomes ionized and leaves a characteristic blip in the magnetic field -- they knew what to look for. And there it was on Europa -- a brief, localized bend in the magnetic field that had never been explained.
Galileo carried a powerful Plasma Wave Spectrometer to measure plasma waves caused by charged particles in gases around Europa's atmosphere. Jia's team pulled that data as well, and it also appeared to back the theory of a plume.
But numbers alone couldn't paint the whole picture. Jia layered the magnetometry and plasma wave signatures into new 3D modeling developed by his team at the University of Michigan, which simulated the interactions of plasma with solar system bodies. The final ingredient was the data from Hubble that suggested dimensions of potential plumes.
The result that emerged, with a simulated plume, was a match to the magnetic field and plasma signatures the team pulled from the Galileo data.
"There now seem to be too many lines of evidence to dismiss plumes at Europa," said Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "This result makes the plumes seem to be much more real and, for me, is a tipping point. These are no longer uncertain blips on a faraway image."
The findings are good news for the Europa Clipper mission, which may launch as early as June 2022. From its orbit of Jupiter, Europa Clipper will sail close by the moon in rapid, low-altitude flybys. If plumes are indeed spewing vapor from Europa's ocean or subsurface lakes, Europa Clipper could sample the frozen liquid and dust particles. The mission team is gearing up now to look at potential orbital paths, and the new research will play into those discussions.
"If plumes exist, and we can directly sample what's coming from the interior of Europa, then we can more easily get at whether Europa has the ingredients for life," Pappalardo said. "That's what the mission is after. That's the big picture."
JPL manages the Europa Clipper mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
Scientists re-examining data from an old mission bring new insights to the tantalizing question of whether Jupiter’s moon Europa has the ingredients to support life.
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The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency's Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.
"NASA has a proud history of firsts," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars."
The Mars Helicopter is a technology demonstration that will travel to the Red Planet with the Mars 2020 rover. It will attempt controlled flight in Mars' thin atmosphere, which may enable more ambitious missions in the future.
U.S. Rep. John Culberson of Texas echoed Bridenstine's appreciation of the impact of American firsts on the future of exploration and discovery.
"It's fitting that the United States of America is the first nation in history to fly the first heavier-than-air craft on another world," Culberson said. "This exciting and visionary achievement will inspire young people all over the United States to become scientists and engineers, paving the way for even greater discoveries in the future."
Started in August 2013 as a technology development project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Mars Helicopter had to prove that big things could come in small packages. The result of the team's four years of design, testing and redesign weighs in at little under four pounds (1.8 kilograms). Its fuselage is about the size of a softball, and its twin, counter-rotating blades will bite into the thin Martian atmosphere at almost 3,000 rpm -- about 10 times the rate of a helicopter on Earth.
"Exploring the Red Planet with NASA's Mars Helicopter exemplifies a successful marriage of science and technology innovation and is a unique opportunity to advance Mars exploration for the future," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. "After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world."
The helicopter also contains built-in capabilities needed for operation at Mars, including solar cells to charge its lithium-ion batteries, and a heating mechanism to keep it warm through the cold Martian nights. But before the helicopter can fly at Mars it has to get there. It will do so attached to the belly pan of the Mars 2020 rover.
"The altitude record for a helicopter flying here on Earth is about 40,000 feet. The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it's already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up," said Mimi Aung, Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL. "To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be."
Once the rover is on the planet's surface, a suitable location will be found to deploy the helicopter down from the vehicle and place it onto the ground. The rover then will be driven away from the helicopter to a safe distance from which it will relay commands. After its batteries are charged and a myriad of tests are performed, controllers on Earth will command the Mars Helicopter to take its first autonomous flight into history.
"We don't have a pilot and Earth will be several light minutes away, so there is no way to joystick this mission in real time," said Aung. "Instead, we have an autonomous capability that will be able to receive and interpret commands from the ground, and then fly the mission on its own."
The full 30-day flight test campaign will include up to five flights of incrementally farther flight distances, up to a few hundred meters, and longer durations as long as 90 seconds, over a period. On its first flight, the helicopter will make a short vertical climb to 10 feet (3 meters), where it will hover for about 30 seconds.
As a technology demonstration, the Mars Helicopter is considered a high-risk, high-reward project. If it does not work, the Mars 2020 mission will not be impacted. If it does work, helicopters may have a real future as low-flying scouts and aerial vehicles to access locations not reachable by ground travel.
"The ability to see clearly what lies beyond the next hill is crucial for future explorers," said Zurbuchen. "We already have great views of Mars from the surface as well as from orbit. With the added dimension of a bird's-eye view from a 'marscopter,' we can only imagine what future missions will achieve."
Mars 2020 will launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and is expected to reach Mars in February 2021.
The rover will conduct geological assessments of its landing site on Mars, determine the habitability of the environment, search for signs of ancient Martian life, and assess natural resources and hazards for future human explorers. Scientists will use the instruments aboard the rover to identify and collect samples of rock and soil, encase them in sealed tubes, and leave them on the planet's surface for potential return to Earth on a future Mars mission.
The Mars 2020 Project at JPL in Pasadena, California, manages rover development for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA's Launch Services Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.
For more information about NASA's Mars missions, go to:
NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars. The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.
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Media are invited to cover the prelaunch briefing and launch of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO), NASA's latest Earth-observing satellite mission. The briefing on Thursday, May 17, and launch on Saturday, May 19, will air on NASA Television, the agency's website and https://youtube.com/nasajpl/live.
A joint mission with the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), GRACE-FO will provide critical measurements that will be used together with other data to monitor the movement of water masses across the planet and mass changes within Earth itself. Monitoring changes in ice sheets and glaciers, underground water storage and sea level provides a unique view of Earth's climate and has far-reaching benefits. The mission is planned to fly at least five years.
The prelaunch news briefing will be held at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) May 17 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Media who wish to participate by phone must contact Elena Mejia at elena.mejia@jpl.nasa.gov or 818-354-1712, no later than 9:30 a.m. May 17.
Media and the public also may ask questions during the event via social media using the hashtag #askNASA.
Briefing participants will be:
David Jarrett, GRACE-FO program executive in the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington
Frank Webb, GRACE-FO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
Frank Flechtner, GRACE-FO project manager at GFZ in Potsdam, Germany
Phil Morton, NASA GRACE-FO project manager at JPL
Capt. Jennifer Haden, weather officer for the 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg.
Media who are accredited to attend the prelaunch briefing in person should confirm their participation with Lt. Amy Rasmussen of the 30th Space Wing Public Affairs Office at amy.rasmussen@us.af.mil no later than 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) on Monday, May 14.
Accredited media desiring to cover the event should meet at the south gate of Vandenberg on California State Road 246 at 10 a.m. to be escorted by 30th Space Wing Public Affairs to the news conference. Media must present a valid driver's license or passport to receive a base pass.
The satellites are scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 1:04 p.m. PDT (4:04 p.m. EDT) from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg. The launch window is instantaneous. GRACE-FO will share its ride to orbit with five Iridium NEXT communications satellites as part of a commercial rideshare agreement. Spacecraft separation from the rocket will occur approximately 11.5 minutes after launch. The spacecraft's final circular, near-polar orbit will be 305 miles (490 kilometers) at an inclination of 89 degrees, orbiting Earth once every approximately 90 minutes. Launch coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. PDT (3:30 p.m. EDT) on NASA Television, the agency's website and https://youtube.com/nasajpl/live.
Remote Camera Opportunities
Media who have applied for credentialing will receive instructions for remote camera opportunities from SpaceX Media Relations in advance of the launch.
Day-of-Launch Viewing
Media who have applied for credentialing will receive instructions for day-of-launch viewing from SpaceX Media Relations in advance of the launch. For photographers: the launch azimuth after liftoff will be 180.1 degrees.
Weather and visibility conditions permitting, the launch may be visible from the Greater Los Angeles area by looking to the west.
Media Accreditation
The deadline for media who are U.S. citizens to apply for accreditation to cover prelaunch and launch activities for the Iridium-6/GRACE-FO launch is 2 p.m. PDT Sunday, May 13. U.S. media who are interested in covering the launch can apply by emailing media@spacex.com . The deadline to apply for accreditation for media who are foreign nationals or green card holders has passed.
Vandenberg security will have final authority to decide which media are credentialed to cover launches, and submitting the request by the deadline does not guarantee approval.
NASA Television Coverage
NASA Television will carry the prelaunch news conference and launch commentary coverage, and stream both events at:
Audio only of the news conference and the launch coverage will be carried on the NASA "V" circuits, which may be accessed by dialing 321-867-1220, -1240, -1260 or -7135.
NASA Web Prelaunch and Launch Coverage
For extensive prelaunch, countdown and launch day coverage of the liftoff of Iridium-6/GRACE-FO aboard the Falcon 9 rocket, go to: https://www.nasa.gov/gracefo
Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog will begin at launch minus two days. Coverage will feature real-time updates of countdown milestones. To learn more about the GRACE-FO mission, visit:
The GRACE-FO Staff News Center at the NASA Vandenberg Resident Office will open Wednesday, May 16. To speak with a NASA communications specialist, call 805-605-3051 beginning at that time. A recorded launch status report also will be available by dialing 805-734-2693.
To arrange an interview outside of the Vandenberg base, please contact the JPL Media Relations representative in Lompoc at 626-390-8506 or the JPL Media Relations office in Pasadena at 818-354-5011.
JPL manages the GRACE-FO mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, under the direction of the Earth Systematic Missions Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The spacecraft were built by Airbus Defence and Space in Friedrichshafen, Germany, under subcontract to JPL. GFZ contracted GRACE-FO launch services from Iridium, and SpaceX is providing the Falcon 9 launch service. GFZ has subcontracted mission operations to the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which operates the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.
News Media Contact
Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0474 / 818-653-8339
alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov
Steve Cole
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918 / 202-657-2194
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov
Robin Ghormley
30th Space Wing, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
805-606-4884
robin.ghormley@us.af.mil
Eva Behrend
SpaceX, Hawthorne, Calif.
310-363-6247
media@spacex.com
2018-095
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Media are invited to cover the prelaunch briefing and launch of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO), NASA’s latest Earth-observing satellite mission. The briefing on Thursday, May 17, and launch on Saturday, May 19, will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
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Students from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Edwardsville, Illinois, will have the opportunity to talk with astronauts on the International Space Station next week as part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.
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NASA will host a Science Chat at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT Monday, May 14), to discuss the latest analysis of Jupiter's moon Europa and its status as one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for life. The event will air live on NASA Television, Facebook Live, Twitch TV, Ustream, YouTube, Twitter/Periscope and the agency's website.
Europa has long been a high priority for exploration because beneath its icy crust lies a salty, liquid water ocean. NASA's Europa Clipper, targeted to launch in 2022, will be equipped with the instruments necessary to determine whether Europa possesses the ingredients necessary to support life as we know it.
Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, and JoAnna Wendel, the division's communications lead, will host the chat. Guests include:
Xianzhe Jia, associate professor in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Elizabeth Turtle, research scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland
Margaret Kivelson, professor emerita of Space Physics in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles
The public can send questions on social media by using #AskNASA at any time during the event.
NASA will host a Science Chat at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, May 14, to discuss the latest analysis of Jupiter’s moon Europa and its status as one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for life.
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NASA has awarded five-year grants, each approximately $8 million, to three research teams that will study the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
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NASA has signed a second space act agreement with Uber Technologies, Inc., to further explore concepts and technologies related to urban air mobility (UAM) to ensure a safe and efficient system for future air transportation in populated areas.
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NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor will be available at 8 a.m. EDT Tuesday, May 15, for live satellite interviews one last time before she launches June 6 on her first spaceflight.
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Students from Houston area schools who participated in the Genes in Space challenge, will talk to astronauts on the International Space Station during an events hosted by Boeing and Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The event is part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.
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NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday, May 10, to discuss select science investigations and technology demonstrations launching on the next Orbital ATK commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station.
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NASA has received radio signals indicating that the first-ever CubeSats headed to deep space are alive and well. The first signal was received at 12:15 p.m. PST (3:15 p.m. EST) today; the second at 1:58 p.m. PST (4:58 p.m. EST). Engineers will now be performing a series of checks before both CubeSats enter their cruise to deep space.
Mars Cube One, or MarCO, is a pair of briefcase-sized spacecraft that launched along with NASA's InSight Mars lander at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT) today from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California. InSight is a scientific mission that will probe the Red Planet's deep interior for the first time; the name stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.
The twin MarCO CubeSats are on their own separate mission: rather than collecting science, they will follow the InSight lander on its cruise to Mars, testing out miniature spacecraft technology along the way.
Both were programmed to unfold their solar panels soon after launch, followed by several opportunities to radio back their health.
"Both MarCO-A and B say 'Polo!' It's a sign that the little sats are alive and well," said Andy Klesh, chief engineer for the MarCO mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which built the twin spacecraft.
The computers inside each MarCO CubeSat haven't been turned on since being tested at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, in mid-March, where they were prepared for launch by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems of Irvine, California. Each spacecraft had to do a lot of things right by itself for the team to hear a signal: batteries had to retain enough charge for the spacecraft to deploy their solar arrays, stabilize their attitude, turn toward the Sun and turn on their radios.
A couple of weeks will be spent assessing how the MarCO CubeSats are performing. If they survive the radiation of space and function as planned, they'll fly over the Red Planet during InSight's entry, descent and landing in November. They each have a special antenna to relay InSight's vital signs during the infamous "Seven Minutes of Terror," the crucial phase which has claimed the majority of humanity's probes sent to land on the Red Planet.
CubeSats are a kind of boxy satellite invented to teach engineering students how to build spacecraft. Today, they offer access to space for private companies and research institutions. They're just one kind of "SmallSat," which includes a broad range organized by weight class. CubeSats are generally under 33 pounds (15 kilograms), and can weigh as little as about five pounds (2.5 kilograms). They're distinctively modular, which makes it easier to buy "plug-in" parts rather than custom-design every part of the spacecraft.
NASA is taking the opportunity to test several experimental systems with MarCO. Their radios, folding high-gain antennas, attitude control and propulsion systems are all included to prove new technologies in deep space.
"We're nervous but excited," said Joel Krajewski of JPL, MarCO's project manager. "A lot of work went into designing and testing these components so that they could survive the trip to Mars and relay data during InSight's landing. But our broader goal is to learn more about how to adapt CubeSat technologies for future deep-space missions."
When InSight arrives on Mars in November, it won't rely on MarCO for sending landing data back to Earth. That job will go to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as several Earth-based astronomy telescopes. But the MarCO mission could help prove the potential for CubeSats as a kind of bring-your-own "black box" for future NASA missions.
MarCO was built by JPL, which manages InSight and MarCO for NASA. It was funded by both JPL and NASA's Science Mission Directorate. A number of commercial suppliers provided unique technologies for MarCO. A full list, along with more information about the spacecraft, can be found here.
News Media Contact
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202-358-1003
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2018-090
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NASA's
Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic
Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is on a 300-million-mile
(483-million-kilometer) trip to Mars to study for the first time what lies deep beneath the
surface of the Red Planet. InSight launched at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT)
Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
"The United States continues to lead the way
to Mars with this next exciting mission to study the Red Planet's core and
geological processes," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "I want to
congratulate all the teams from NASA and our international partners who made
this accomplishment possible. As we continue to gain momentum in our work to
send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars, missions like InSight are going
to prove invaluable."
First reports indicate the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V
rocket that carried InSight into space was seen as far south as Carlsbad,
California, and as far east as Oracle, Arizona. One person recorded video of the launch from a
private aircraft flying along the California coast.
Riding
the Centaur second stage of the rocket, the spacecraft reached orbit 13 minutes
and 16 seconds after launch. Sixty-one minutes later, the Centaur ignited a
second time, sending InSight on a trajectory toward the Red Planet. InSight
separated from the Centaur about 9 minutes later -- 93 minutes after launch --
and contacted the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network at 5:41 a.m. PDT (8:41
a.m. EDT).
"The
Kennedy Space Center and ULA teams gave us a great ride today and started
InSight on our six-and-a-half-month journey to Mars," said Tom Hoffman, InSight
project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"We've received positive indication the InSight spacecraft is in good health
and we are all excited to be going to Mars once again to do groundbreaking
science."
With
its successful launch, NASA's InSight team now is focusing on the six-month
voyage. During the cruise phase of the mission, engineers will check out the
spacecraft's subsystems and science instruments, making sure its solar arrays
and antenna are oriented properly, tracking its trajectory and performing
maneuvers to keep it on course.
InSight
is scheduled to land on the Red Planet around 3 p.m. EST (noon PST) Nov. 26,
where it will conduct science operations until Nov. 24, 2020, which equates to
one year and 40 days on Mars, or nearly two Earth years.
"Scientists
have been dreaming about doing seismology on Mars for years. In my case, I had
that dream 40 years ago as a graduate student, and now that shared dream has
been lofted through the clouds and into reality," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight
principal investigator at JPL.
The
InSight lander will probe and collect data on marsquakes, heat flow from the
planet's interior and the way the planet wobbles, to help scientists understand
what makes Mars tick and the processes that shaped the four rocky planets of our
inner solar system.
"InSight will not
only teach us about Mars, it will enhance our understanding of
formation of other rocky worlds like Earth and the Moon,
and thousands of planets around other stars," said
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. "InSight
connects science and technology with a diverse
team of JPL-led international and commercial partners."
Previous
missions to Mars investigated the surface history of the Red Planet by
examining features like canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil, but no one has
attempted to investigate the planet's earliest evolution, which can only be
found by looking far below the surface.
"InSight
will help us unlock the mysteries of Mars in a new way, by not just studying
the surface of the planet, but by looking deep inside to help us learn about
the earliest building blocks of the planet," said JPL Director Michael Watkins.
JPL
manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of
NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Alabama. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and
lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. NASA's Launch
Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch service acquisition,
integration, analysis, and launch management. United Launch Alliance of Centennial,
Colorado, is NASA's launch service provider.
A
number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études
Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the
InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior
Structure (SEIS) instrument, with
significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System
Research (MPS) in Göttingen, Germany. DLR provided the Heat Flow and
Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument.
For
more information about InSight, and to follow along on its flight to Mars,
visit:
NASA’s Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is on a 300-million-mile trip to Mars to study for the first time what lies deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet.
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All
systems are go for NASA's next launch to the Red Planet.
The
early-morning liftoff on Saturday of the Mars InSight lander will mark the
first time in history an interplanetary launch will originate from the West
Coast. InSight will launch from the U.S. Air Force Vandenberg Air Force Base Space
Launch Complex 3E. The two-hour launch window will open on May 5 at 4:05 a.m.
PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT).
InSight, for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat
Transport, will launch aboard aUnited
Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. InSight will study the deep interior of
Mars to learn how all rocky planets formed, including Earth and its Moon. The
lander's instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes, and a probe
that will monitor the flow of heat from the planet's interior.
The
ULA rocket will carry the spacecraft over the Channel Islands just off the
California Coast and continue climbing out over the Pacific, shadowing the
coastline south beyond Baja California. InSight's Atlas will reach orbit about 13
minutes after launch, when the rocket is about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers)
northwest of Isabella Island, Ecuador.
"For
those Southern Californians who are interested in rockets or space exploration,
or have insomnia, we hope to put on a great show this Saturday," said Tom
Hoffman, InSight project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California. "But for those who want to sleep in on Saturday, there
will be another opportunity to engage with this historic mission. We will be
landing on Mars in the western Elysium Planitia
region on Monday, Nov. 26, around noon Pacific time. You will be able to watch
a live stream of this landing while working on your holiday shopping."
Getting a Mars mission flying requires a great many
milestones. Among those still to come are the official start of the countdown
to launch -- which comes on Friday, May 4 at 10:14 a.m. PDT (Saturday, May 5,
1:14 a.m. EDT). A little over an hour later, at about 11:30 p.m. PDT (May 5, 2:30 a.m.
EDT), the 260-foot-tall (80-meter) Mobile Service Tower -- a structure that has
been protecting the Atlas V launch vehicle and its InSight payload during their
vertical assembly -- will begin a 20-minute long, 250-foot (about 80-meter) roll
away from the Atlas. Four hours and 25 minutes later, the launch window will
open.
"I've
been to several rocket launches, but it is a whole different vibe when there is
something you've been working on for years sitting in the nose cone waiting to
get hurled beyond our atmosphere," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal
investigator at JPL. "But as exciting as launch day will be, it's just a first
step in a journey that should tell us not only why Mars formed the way it did,
but how planets take shape in general."
InSight's launch period is
May 5 through June 8, 2018, with multiple launch opportunities over windows of
approximately two hours each date. Launch opportunities are set five minutes
apart during each date's window.Whichever
date the launch occurs, InSight's landing on Mars is planned for Nov. 26, 2018,
around noon PST (3 p.m. EST).
JPL
manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of
NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Alabama. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and
lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. NASA's Launch
Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida provides
launch management. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is NASA's
launch service provider of the Atlas 5 rocket. A number of European partners,
including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German
Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission.In particular, CNES provided the Seismic
Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with significant
contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar Systems Research
(MPS). DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package
(HP3) instrument.
Mission To Study How Melting Polar Ice Affects Regional Sea Levels
Reports of the
rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet often refer to how much the melting
could add to global sea levels -- as if meltwater raises the ocean evenly, like
a sink filling up. The reality is far different. Water from West Antarctica will
end up raising sea levels more in Los Angeles and Miami than in Rio de Janeiro,
for example, even though Brazil is thousands of miles closer to Antarctica than
the United States.
How do we know?
Scientists first observed this ocean pattern using data from NASA's Gravity
Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, which ended last
October after 15 years of operation. When the NASA/German Research Centre for
Geosciences GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission is launched from Vandenberg Air
Force Base in Central California next month, it will take up the job of
monitoring melting polar ice. That will give scientists a renewed opportunity
to understand some of the many processes that lead to different rates of sea
level rise on different coastlines. Since runoff from melting ice sheets and
glaciers currently accounts for about two-thirds of global sea level rise, understanding
these melt-related processes is a critical piece of understanding sea level
change at a regional scale.
Fingerprints of Water
The
gravitational pull of an ice sheet attracts seawater from
the nearby oceans and causes it to pile up along the coastlines. When the ice
sheet melts and loses mass, the gravitational pull is reduced, causing the sea
level nearby to fall. At the same time, the additional meltwater in the ocean
causes sea level rise -- but it rises farther away from the melt source. The
falling sea level near the ice sheet and rising sea level farther away are
connected like the rising and falling ends of a seesaw. Since every ice sheet
and glacier has a unique location and size, each one creates a different
seesawing pattern, as individual as a fingerprint.
Scientists had theorized that these fingerprint patterns
existed, but only observationally
detected them for the first time in September 2017 using GRACE data.
The fingerprints from Greenland and Antarctica reach across
the equator, so that low- and mid-latitude land masses are affected by melting from
both regions. These coastlines may be affected more strongly by the ice loss in
the opposite hemisphere. New York City, for example, experiences slightly more
sea level rise from ice melt in Antarctica than from Greenland. Or for an
extreme example, Greenland's ice loss is currently estimated to contribute 12
times as much to sea level rise in Cape Town, South Africa, than it is to
rising seas in London, even though London is 8,000 miles closer to Greenland.
How GRACE-FO Works
GRACE-FO, like GRACE,
is designed to measure monthly changes in gravitational pull that result from
changes in the mass on Earth below the orbiting satellites. More than 99
percent of Earth's mean gravitational pull does not change from one month to
the next, because it is due to the solid Earth itself -- its surface and
interior. Water, however, moves continuously nearly everywhere: rain falls,
ocean currents flow, ice melts and so on. As the twin GRACE-FO satellites orbit
Earth, one closely following the other, these moving masses alter the
gravitational pull below the two satellites, changing the distance between them
very slightly. The record of these changes is analyzed to create monthly maps
of the variations and redistribution of Earth's mass near the surface.
Imprints Below Earth's Surface
Another effect
of the changing mass from melting ice involves not just recent ice loss but the
continental-scale melt-off that ended about 6,000 years ago. That ancient event
still has repercussions for sea levels on today's coastlines.
Frank Webb of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the project scientist
for GRACE-FO, used the analogy of memory foam to describe this effect.
"When you lie on a memory foam bed, you sink into it. When you get up, it
rebounds, slowly. There may be a slight bulge around where you were lying."
In the same way, an ice sheet presses on Earth's viscous mantle layer, about 50
miles below the surface. Over millennia, the heavy ice pushes the surface layer
down into the mantle, and mantle material bulges out elsewhere. When an ice
sheet melts, the mantle flows back in the reverse direction, in a process that
plays out for millennia after the ice has disappeared.
The North
American tectonic plate is still rebounding from the loss of mass at the end of
the last ice age. At that time, today's Canada and Greenland were buried
beneath thick ice while most of what
is now the United States remained ice free. The mantle flowed away from
under Canada and bulged under the United States. Today, as the flow moves in the
opposite direction, the U.S. side of the North American plate is sinking very
slowly, and Canada is rising.
Even if there were no other changes occurring in today's
oceans, these up-and-down movements of the solid Earth would cause sea levels to
change on today's U.S. East Coast. As it is, they add to or counteract other influences
on sea level.
The
Bottom Line
Since the original GRACE mission launched in 2002, its
measurements have shown that Greenland has been losing about 280 gigatons of
ice per year on average, and Antarctic losses are at a rate of almost 120 gigatons
per year. (One gigaton of water would fill about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming
pools.) The data also showed that the rate of loss accelerated from 2003 to 2013
by about 25 gigatons per year every year in Greenland, and 11 gigatons per year
every year in Antarctica. While considerable uncertainties remain, the
measurements from GRACE over the past 15 years leave scientists and planners
concerned that sea level rise will be measured in feet rather than inches by
the end of the century.
Combined, these other effects from gravitational changes as
ice melts in Greenland and Antarctica can add or subtract 25 to 50 percent of a
regional change in sea level caused by melting ice alone.
Questions remain about all of these processes. For example,
how much natural variation is there in the rate of ice loss that we are
currently observing? How does ice loss in some regions interact with natural
climate patterns such as El Niño? While
15 years of high-quality, global and nearly uninterrupted data from GRACE have
already produced a plethora of discoveries, the longer data record from GRACE-FO
is essential to tease out the signal of long-term climate evolution from shorter-term
effects of these recurring climate patterns.
GRACE-FO is
scheduled to launch on May 19. For more information, see:
