NASA Interns, New Mexico Community, Virginia Students to Call Space Station

NASA interns, visitors at New Mexico’s City of Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science, and NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility will speak with astronauts aboard the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station next week.

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Space Station Experiment Reaches Ultracold Milestone

The International Space Station is officially home to the coolest experiment in space.

NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) was installed in the station's U.S. science lab in late May and is now producing clouds of ultracold atoms known as Bose-Einstein condensates. These "BECs" reach temperatures just above absolute zero, the point at which atoms should theoretically stop moving entirely. This is the first time BECs have ever been produced in orbit.

NASA's Cold Atom Lab will produce clouds of ultra-cold atoms aboard the International Space Station to perform quantum physics experiments in microgravity. Atoms are chilled to about one 10 billionth of a degree above Absolute Zero, or about 10 billion times colder than the average temperature of deep space. At those temperatures, atoms behave in strange ways, allowing scientists to investigate the fundamental nature of matter.

CAL is a multiuser facility dedicated to the study of fundamental laws of nature using ultracold quantum gases in microgravity. Cold atoms are long-lived, precisely controlled quantum particles that provide an ideal platform for the study of quantum phenomena and potential applications of quantum technologies. This NASA facility is the first of its kind in space. It is designed to advance scientists' ability to make precision measurements of gravity, probing long-standing problems in quantum physics (the study of the universe at the very smallest scales), and exploring the wavelike nature of matter.

"Having a BEC experiment operating on the space station is a dream come true," said Robert Thompson, CAL project scientist and a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "It's been a long, hard road to get here, but completely worth the struggle, because there's so much we're going to be able to do with this facility."

CAL scientists confirmed last week that the facility has produced BECs from atoms of rubidium, with temperatures as low as 100 nanoKelvin, or one ten-millionth of one Kelvin above absolute zero. (Absolute zero, or zero Kelvin, is equal to minu 459 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 273 degrees Celsius). That's colder than the average temperature of space, which is about 3 Kelvin (minus 454 degrees Fahrenheit/minus 270 degrees Celsius). But the CAL scientists have their sights set even lower, and expect to reach temperatures colder than what any BEC experiments have achieved on Earth.

At these ultracold temperatures, the atoms in a BEC begin to behave unlike anything else on Earth. In fact, BECs are characterized as a fifth state of matter, distinct from gases, liquids, solids and plasma. In a BEC, atoms act more like waves than particles. The wave nature of atoms is typically only observable at microscopic scales, but BECs make this phenomenon macroscopic, and thus much easier to study. The ultracold atoms all assume their lowest energy state, and take on the same wave identity, becoming indistinguishable from one another. Together, the atom clouds are like a single "super atom," instead of individual atoms.

Not a simple instrument

"CAL is an extremely complicated instrument," said Robert Shotwell, chief engineer of JPL's astronomy and physics directorate, who has overseen the challenging project since February 2017. "Typically, BEC experiments involve enough equipment to fill a room and require near-constant monitoring by scientists, whereas CAL is about the size of a small refrigerator and can be operated remotely from Earth. It was a struggle and required significant effort to overcome all the hurdles necessary to produce the sophisticated facility that's operating on the space station today."

The first laboratory BECs were produced in 1995, but the phenomenon was first predicted 71 years earlier by physicists Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein. Eric Cornell, Carl Wienman and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for being the first to create and characterize BECs in the lab. Five science groups, including groups led by Cornell and Ketterle, will conduct experiments with CAL during its first year. Hundreds of BEC experiments have been operated on Earth since the mid-1990s, and a few BEC experiments have even made brief trips to space aboard sounding rockets. But CAL is the first facility of its kind on the space station, where scientists can conduct daily studies of BECs over long periods.

BECs are created in atom traps, or frictionless containers made out of magnetic fields or focused lasers. On Earth, when these traps are shut off, gravity pulls on the ultracold atoms and they can only be studied for fractions of a second. The persistent microgravity of the space station allows scientists to observe individual BECs for five to 10 seconds at a time, with the ability to repeat these measurements for up to six hours per day. As the atom cloud decompresses inside the atom trap, its temperature naturally drops, and the longer the cloud stays in the trap, the colder it gets. This natural phenomenon (that a drop in pressure also means a drop in temperature) is also the reason that a can of spray paint gets cold when the paint is sprayed out: the can's internal pressure is dropping. In microgravity, the BECs can decompress to colder temperatures than any earthbound instrument. Day-to-day operations of CAL require no intervention from the astronauts aboard the station.

In addition to the BECs made from rubidium atoms, the CAL team is working toward making BECs using two different isotopes of potassium atoms.

CAL is currently in a commissioning phase, in which the operations team conducts a long series of tests to fully understand how the CAL facility operates in microgravity.

"There is a globe-spanning team of scientists ready and excited to use this facility," said Kamal Oudrhiri, JPL's mission manager for CAL. "The diverse range of experiments they plan to perform means there are many techniques for manipulating and cooling the atoms that we need to adapt for microgravity, before we turn the instrument over to the principal investigators to begin science operations." The science phase is expected to begin in early September and will last three years.

The Cold Atom Laboratory launched to the space station on May 21, 2018, aboard a Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) Cygnus spacecraft from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Designed and built at JPL, CAL 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.

For more information about the Cold Atom Lab, visit:

https://coldatomlab.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield

818-393-1821

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-180

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NASA Gives $1.4 Million to Help Minority-Serving Colleges Develop New STEM Courses

The MUREP Innovations in Space Technology Curriculum (MISTC) awards align with the priorities of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), which is responsible for developing the crosscutting, pioneering new technologies and capabilities the agency needs for current and future missions.

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NASA Awards Contract for Earth Science Data Archive Center Support

NASA has awarded a contract to the University of Colorado Boulder for the management and operations of the agency’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System Snow and Ice Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC).

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JPL Helps Educate the World's Future Educators

Education Institute empowers the next generation of teachers

When Isaac Tenorio found out he had been accepted to NASA's Educator Institute at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, he was excited about what he would learn, and the wealth of experiments and lesson plan ideas he could bring back with him to start his teaching career on the tiny island of Saipan -- a U.S. commonwealth in the western Pacific.

But after a week at JPL, Tenorio -- a senior at Northern Marianas Island College in Saipan -- was surprised to discover how eager he was to bring his knowledge and experience back to his fellow colleagues.

"The amount of information, activities and experiments we learned about over the week was just so valuable, I'm excited to share this entire experience with my classmates so they can use it in their future classrooms," Tenorio said.

Tenorio was one of 50 pre-service teachers accepted to attend the NASA Minority University Research and Education Project's (MUREP) weeklong Educator Institute held at JPL this past June. It was for teachers planning to teach elementary grades once they finish their schooling. JPL hosted another week-long session this week for future high school teachers.

The program's objective is to bring students from Minority Serving Institutions to NASA centers for a unique STEM professional development opportunity.

Education Program Specialist Ota Lutz of JPL said the Educator Institutes have always been a chance to empower future teachers, and each day's schedule is filled with a mix of learning activities such as Play-Doh volcano demonstrations, tours of JPL's facilities, and talks from scientists, researchers and engineers.

"Textbooks are good, but sometimes you just need some current information and to put together a cardboard rover, or to build a 20-foot inflatable planetarium out of trash bags," Lutz said. "We can provide those lessons; those up-to-date experiences backed by some of the world's leading research."

Geographic Diversity

While the Educator Institutes typically attract students from schools in the Los Angeles region, this year's program included representatives from Northern Marianas College and Salish Kootenai College -- a Native American tribal college in Montana.

Julius Weaselhead was one of five students from Salish Kootenai participating this year. Once she finishes her senior year, Weaselhead hopes to teach third grade in a tribal community.

"I really feel empowered to use the tools and lesson plans that NASA has outlined on its education sites," Weaselhead said. "I have never been a big STEM person, but after this week, I feel like I can bring a hands-on approach to teaching science-based topics."

Having schools participating from outside California brought a new layer of geographic diversity to the program, and meant that the educators were sometimes getting the education.

"It's something we don't think about much, but Los Angeles is home to the second largest population of Native Americans in the country," Lutz said. "We often talk about meeting the needs of underserved or minority communities in the region, and it is really good for the local teachers in the area, and us, to think about the Native American presence here. Understanding cultural heritage while at the same time teaching science-based curriculum is important."

Hitting Close to Home

For Tenorio and his fellow Northern Marianas College students, a climate change presentation by Science Data Application Lead Karen Yuen of JPL turned into a real-world wake up call for the entire group.

"You don't see it here in the mainland, but over there, the sea levels are rising, we're losing our islands," Tenorio said. "A lot of our brothers and sisters on neighboring islands, their homes are gone. I wanted to let other people know about our situation back home, and that every action really does count. Every conservation act really does count. I cannot blame anybody for not caring. It's a tiny island in the Pacific and we're way out there. But I want people to know that this is happening. And I felt like that was a special moment when I was able to tell people here, and they know now."

Lutz said Tenorio's words resonated with the group.

"I was watching the faces of the kids from the local colleges, and they were just silent. It really brought home that what we're talking about here is really happening out there."

It was indicative of what the MUREP Educator Institute is about: Give future educators the information and tools NASA has at its disposal, and empower teachers to inspire the next generation of students.

"Our activities and lessons are tools, they're not the be-all-end-all," Lutz said. "What we strive to do is educate teachers on how to educate the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and so on to not just be good students, but critical thinkers."

This particular MUREP Educator Institute ran from June 25-29. In addition to Northern Marianas College and Salish-Kootenai College, pre-service teachers from UC Riverside, Cal State Northridge, Cal State Dominguez Hills, Cal State Los Angeles and La Sierra University attended.

To learn more about the MUREP educator institute, visit the NASA Educator Professional Development Collaborative website.

More information about NASA's Minority Research and Education Project and related programs, can be found here.

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4269

esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Taylor Hill

JPL Internal Communications

2018-179

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NASA Invites Media to Meet Earth Science Innovators

From flooding in New Orleans to coffee cultivation in Guatemala and wildfires in Alaska, NASA Earth observations from space are being put to work helping address a wide range of real-world issues.

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NASA Satellite Image Shows Lava Flow from Hawaii Volcano

New NASA satellite imagery captured a hot lava flow from fissure 8 of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. The flow from fissure 8 extends from the Leilani Estates to the Pacific Ocean -- with main ocean entry points near Ahalanui.

The imagery, from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection (ASTER) radiometer instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, was taken on Wednesday, July 25. Vegetation is shown in red, and clouds are white. The hot lava flows detected by ASTER's thermal infrared channels are overlaid in yellow. The image covers an area of 9.5 by 11.5 miles (15.3 by 18.6 kilometers).

Fissure 8 is one of the most active fissures of many that have broken ground since Kilauea began erupting in early May. Flying debris from the explosive interaction between lava and water is a serious hazard near ocean entry points. The interaction also creates laze -- plumes laden with hydrochloric acid and volcanic particles -- that can irritate the eyes, lungs and skin.

Kilauea is one of the world's most active volcanoes. It is the youngest and southeastern-most volcano on the Island of Hawaii.

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4269

esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-178

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NASA Administrator to Visit Langley Research Center July 31

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will make his first official visit to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on Tuesday, July 31, to meet with employees and tour the facility.

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NASA Statement on Possible Subsurface Lake near Martian South Pole

A new paper published in Science this week suggests that liquid water may be sitting under a layer of ice at Mars' south pole.

The finding is based on data from the European Mars Express spacecraft, obtained by a radar instrument called MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding). The Italian Space Agency (ASI) led the development of the MARSIS radar. NASA provided half of the instrument, with management of the U.S. portion led by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The paper, authored by the Italian MARSIS team, outlines how a "bright spot" was detected in radar signals about 1 mile (about 1.5 kilometers) below the surface of the ice cap in the Planum Australe region. This strong radar reflection was interpreted by the study's authors as liquid water -- one of the most important ingredients for life in the Universe.

"The bright spot seen in the MARSIS data is an unusual feature and extremely intriguing," said Jim Green, NASA's chief scientist. "It definitely warrants further study. Additional lines of evidence should be pursued to test the interpretation."

"We hope to use other instruments to study it further in the future," Green added.

One of those instruments will be on Mars later this year. NASA's InSight lander will include a heat probe that will burrow down as far as 16 feet (5 meters) below the Martian surface. The probe, built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), will provide crucial data on how much heat escapes the planet and where liquid water could exist near its surface.

"Follow the Water" has been one of the major goals of NASA's Mars program. Water is currently driving NASA's exploration into the outer solar system, where ocean worlds -- like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus -- hold the potential to support life. Even protoplanets like Ceres may explain how water is stored in rocky "buckets" that transport water across the solar system.

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

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JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1003

Joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

2018-177

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Local Winds Play Key Role in Some Megafires

Although drought and overgrown forests are often blamed for major fires in the western United States, new research using unique NASA before-and-after data from a megafire site indicates that highly localized winds sometimes play a much larger role -- creating large, destructive fires even when regional winds are weak.

The study was led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. It focused on the 2014 King Fire, using data from airborne instruments managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, with advanced computer simulations from NCAR. The King Fire occurred in the Sierra Nevada mountain range during California's severe multi-year drought and burned more than 97,000 acres (39,000 hectares).

The study team found that winds -- both very localized winds related to topography and winds created by the searing heat of the flames -- were the reason the fire suddenly ran 15 miles (24 kilometers) up a steep canyon one afternoon. Winds like these, sometimes only a few hundred yards (meters) across, often go undetected by weather stations that may be several miles away. In fact, for several days before the fire, nearby weather stations measured only weak winds.

"This brings into question several widely held and largely unquestioned assumptions, such as very large fires being caused by the accumulation of vegetation, persistent dry conditions, or requiring extreme conditions," said NCAR scientist Janice Coen, the lead author of the study. In the King Fire, she pointed out, "Small-scale winds and winds generated by the fire had a much greater impact on this fire, and potentially others like it, than any of the other factors."

JPL scientist Natasha Stavros, a coauthor on the study, said, "The NASA airborne measurements were unique in that we observed the forest's vertical structure before and after a fire. These observations let us better identify the type of fuel -- grass, shrubs, or trees. That improved the model simulations, particularly of how the fire spread in areas where previous fires had burned or timber had been as harvested, and in areas where the burn severity was greatest."

Experimenting with a Megafire

Large and destructive megafires are becoming more frequent in the western United States. Experts have attributed this to a changing climate, which is causing hotter and sometimes drier conditions, or to a century of fire suppression policies that have left forests with more vegetation to fuel the flames than in the past. Scientists cannot experiment with large and destructive wildfires, so they have fallen back on examining statistical correlations to try to tease out the key factors associated with megafires.

The area consumed by the King Fire, however, had been previously mapped by JPL's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) and MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instruments in visible and thermal infrared wavelengths, as well as by a U.S. Forest Service lidar instrument, resulting in an extensive database about the forest structure and vegetation types. In addition, the authors had access to airborne thermal imagery collected during the fire. The detailed data gave them a rare opportunity to recreate an actual wildfire within a sophisticated NCAR computer model that combines weather prediction and fire behavior, testing the importance of different factors.

Simulations of the King Fire under more extreme drought conditions did not change the ultimate extent of the fire or greatly alter its expansion, and simulations with half of the actual fuel load (as might exist in a less overgrown forest) unfolded in about the same way as the real fire did.

The scientists concluded that the fire became stronger in the canyon because of the inclined slopes. Drought conditions or increased vegetation did help the fire to generate the strong updraft that drew flames up the canyon slope. These factors had little impact while the fire was on flatter ground.

"This is just one case, but it illustrates how the causes of a megafire have sometimes been misunderstood," Coen said.

The study, titled "Deconstructing the King Megafire," was published in the journal Ecological Applications. The research was funded by NASA.

For more information, see:

https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/just-published/133629/fanning-flames-megafires

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-354-4269

Esprit.Smith@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-176

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JPL Interns: 'How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation'

In honor of National Intern Day on Thursday, July 26, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is celebrating the 700 students from around the country who are spending their summer working on space-related projects at the laboratory. A collection of stories about some of the interns and they ways they are contributing to NASA missions and science is available online.

During their 10 weeks at JPL, interns are working side-by-side with scientists, engineers and technologists in their exploration of the solar system and beyond. They're involved in such projects as preparing for missions to Mars and Jupiter's icy moon Europa, studying the habitability of planets outside our solar system, and developing the spacecraft of the future.

Intern Camille V. Yoke, a physics major from the University of South Carolina, is helping develop a spacecraft thruster similar to one that could eventually send astronauts to Mars. She says of her project, "Today, there was a brief period in which I knew something that nobody else on the planet knew -- for 20 minutes before I went and told my boss. You feel as though you're contributing when you know that you have discovered something new."

To find out more about Yoke's project and some of the other ways interns are contributing to NASA missions and science, visit:

To learn about internship programs and other career opportunities at JPL, visit:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/opportunities/

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-393-1821

Calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-175

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NASA to Name Astronauts Assigned to First Boeing, SpaceX Flights

NASA will announce on Friday, Aug. 3, the astronauts assigned to crew the first flight tests and missions of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon, and begin a new era in American spaceflight. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will preside over the event, which will begin at 11 a.m. EDT on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

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JPL's Martians Are Coming to Griffith Observatory

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has long been a home to Mars exploration. But on Monday night, July 30, several JPL scientists and engineers will bring the excitement of exploring Mars to the nearby Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

These "Martians" will interact with the public during a free observatory stargazing party for the Red Planet's closest approach to Earth since 2003.

Some members of JPL Mars missions will participate in the observatory's live streamed show, including:

• Rich Zurek, chief scientist of JPL's Mars Program Office
• Farah Alibay, engineer for NASA's InSight and MarCO missions
• Keri Bean, engineer for NASA's Opportunity rover

The event will be held Monday, July 30, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. PDT (Tuesday). Weather permitting, telescopes staffed by observatory employees and local volunteers will offer visitors viewing opportunities of Mars during its closest approach.

On Monday night, July 30, Earth and Mars will be 35.8 million miles (57.6 million kilometers) from each other, the closest they have been since the historic 34.6-million-mile (55.6 million kilometers) close approach in August 2003. The moment of closest approach is 12:45 a.m. PDT, Tuesday, July 31. By a celestial coincidence, at the moment of closest approach, Mars will be at its very best position for viewing through a telescope from Los Angeles. It crosses the meridian and appears highest in the southern sky at that time. The next similar close approach won't happen until September 11, 2035, when Mars will be 35.4 million miles (56.9 million kilometers) away. Unlike the Sun or Moon during an eclipse, Mars will not change appearance during the close approach.

Details of the Griffith Observatory event, including parking and transportation information, can be found at:

http://www.griffithobservatory.org/events/Mars_close_approach_July_2018.html

Live Online:For those who want to watch the Mars close approach event from home, Griffith Observatory will broadcast live from 10 p.m. PDT Monday, July 30, to 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 31. JPL guests will join the Griffith Observatory programming team, led by observatory Curator Laura Danly, to provide commentary and the latest news about Mars. Griffith Observatory will stream the event live at:

https://www.youtube.com/GriffithObservatory/live

The live feed will also be carried by NASA and JPL at these sites:

https://nasa.gov/livehttps://youtube.com/NASAJPL/live

More information on Mars close approach is at:

https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/night-sky/close-approach/

Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Griffith Observatory is owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks. The Observatory is located on the south slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park.

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-174b

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What Looks Like Ceres on Earth?

With its dark, heavily cratered surface interrupted by tantalizing bright spots, Ceres may not remind you of our home planet Earth at first glance. The dwarf planet, which orbits the Sun in the vast asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is also far smaller than Earth (in both mass and diameter). With its frigid temperature and lack of atmosphere, we're pretty sure Ceres can't support life as we know it.

But these two bodies, Ceres and Earth, formed from similar materials in our solar system. And, after combing through thousands of images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which has been orbiting Ceres since 2015, scientists have spotted many features on Ceres that look like formations they've seen on Earth.

By looking at similar features on different bodies -- what scientists call "analogs" -- we can learn more about the origins and evolution of these bodies over time. Check out these prominent features of Ceres, and see if you recognize any of their earthly cousins!

Occator Crater on Ceres, with its central bright area called Cerealia Facula. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI
Full image and caption

On Ceres: Occator Crater

As Dawn approached Ceres in early 2015, two mysterious gleaming beacons stood out in images: the "bright spots" of Occator Crater. When the spacecraft spiraled into orbits closer to Ceres, higher-resolution images revealed that there are not just two spots, but many. The center of Occator contains a bright, 2,000-foot-high (500-meter-high) dome called the Cerealia Dome, which is covered with bright material. The bright material on top of the dome is called the Cerealia Facula. A collection of smaller bright regions called Vinalia Faculae is clustered on the eastern side of the crater floor.

Thanks to Dawn's observations, scientists think the bright material is made of sodium carbonate and mineral salts. Moreover, Dawn scientists think the Cerealia Dome formed from briny liquid or mushy ice rising from below the surface -- what we call "hydrothermal" activity -- because it involves heat (thermal) and water (hydro).

Scientists have two theories about how this hydrothermal activity happened: either the heat from the impact that formed the crater caused briny liquid or mushy ice to push up on the surface -- so much that it popped out -- or alternatively, the heat from the impact could have enhanced activity related to pre-existing liquid reservoirs just below the surface.

Ibyuk, an example of a pingo in Canada. Credit: Adam Jones/Flickr user adam_jones/Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0
Larger view

On Earth: Pingos

When groundwater on Earth freezes, it can push up against the overlying soil, creating a dome-like structure called a "pingo." These structures appear near the Arctic regions of Earth, including Canada's Pingo National Landmark. "The dimensions, shape and 'fractured' top of a pingo resemble the Cerealia Dome, which may have formed from alternating cycles of ice 'punching' up and effusing onto the surface of Ceres," said Lynnae Quick, planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Panum Crater in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. Credit: USGS
Larger view

On Earth: Volcanic Domes

Panum Crater at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California has rounded edges and fractured summits that remind scientists of the Cerealia Dome, too. Both the Panum dome and the Cerealia dome sit inside pits. Lassen Peak in California, a lava dome, also has a similar shape, as does the dome in the Mount Saint Helens caldera in the state of Washington.

Searles Lake, California. Credit: NASA
Larger view

On Earth: Searles Lake

Like Occator Crater, Searles Lake in California's Mojave Desert is famous for bright evaporite minerals -- that is, minerals that remain long after the evaporation of saltwater. Once a lake fed by water from the Sierra Nevada mountains, today Searles is a dried-out lakebed with white mineral deposits. Mining operations collect minerals rich in sodium and potassium for industrial use. These minerals are mostly found in subsurface brines that are pumped to the surface.

Ahuna Mons, Ceres' "Lonely Mountain," shown with a vertical exaggeration factor of two. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Full image and caption

On Ceres: Ahuna Mons

Ahuna Mons sticks out on Ceres as a tall, lonely mountain with bright material dusting its slopes. Similar to the material found in Occator, the bright coating is made of sodium carbonate. The leading hypothesis is that Ahuna Mons is a cryovolcano -- a very cold volcano that has erupted with salty water, mud and volatile materials instead of molten rock. Ahuna Mons rises an average of 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the surrounding surface, about the same as the height of the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington State. Ahuna Mons doesn't appear to be associated with any impacts, suggesting that Ceres must have had cryovolcanic activity in the recent past.

Hlíðarfjall dome, Iceland. Credit: Hansueli Krapf/Wikimedia Commons contributor Simisa/CC BY-SA 3.0
Larger view

On Earth: Hlíðarfjall dome, Iceland

While nothing in the solar system is exactly like Ahuna Mons, the Hlíðarfjall dome in Iceland has a similar shape. Both have loose, fine-grained material, and are similar in their proportion of heights and widths. But these mountains are very different in composition. The Icelandic dome formed by silicate volcanic material, whereas Ahuna Mons formed primarily from water and salt, with a minor contribution from silicate minerals. "Despite the chemical differences, however, the materials on Earth and Ceres behave similarly when they protrude out of the crust to form volcanoes," said Ottaviano Ruesch, research scientist at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands.

Chaiten Dome in Chile. Credit: NASA
Larger view

On Earth: Chaitén Dome, Chile

Another volcanic structure reminiscent of Ahuna Mons is Chaitén Dome in Chile, located within a caldera, a cauldron-like volcanic feature. Beyond Earth, the Compton-Belkovich volcanic complex on the Moon contains a dome that seems to have formed by silicate materials erupting. "This means that silicic dome formation is a process not limited to Earth," Ruesch said.

Samhain Catenae pit chains on Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI/LPI
Full image and caption

On Ceres: Samhain Catenae Pit Chains

Ceres is full of craters large and small, but it also has chains of small bowl-shaped or elliptical pits that did not result from impacts. Pit chains, such as Samhain Catenae, are caused by fractures or faults in the subsurface, which formed up to a billion years ago. When the fractures or faults leave behind empty space under the surface, loose material falls in from above -- forming the pits at the surface.

Pit chains in northern Iceland, just north of the Krafla Volcano. Credit: Google Earth/Emily Martin/Jennifer Whitten
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On Earth: Iceland Pit Chains

Northern Iceland has a system of pit chains related to faults and fractures. Scientists believe these pit chains formed because of seismic events in the 1970s. A 2011 study led by David Ferrill of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio finds that the pits resulted from poorly consolidated material falling down into subterranean cavities, which were produced by faults and fractures. "It's possible that stresses derived from material upwelling from deeper within Ceres resulted in parts of the crust being pulled apart, which may have formed the Samhain Catenae," said Jennifer Scully, Dawn scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Scientists also have mapped similar pit chains on Mars and other solar system bodies.

Haulani Crater on Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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On Ceres: Haulani Crater

Haulani Crater, 21 miles (34 kilometers) in diameter, with sharp rims and bright material, is one of the youngest craters on Ceres. Some flow features are associated with a mountainous ridge in the center, while other flow features run outward from the crater's rim toward the surrounding area. Pitted terrain on the crater's floor and northern rim probably formed when an impacting body caused water under the surface -- which had been locked in Ceres' crust -- to vaporize. That's why pitted terrain is additional evidence for water ice as a key component of the crust.

Ries Crater, Germany. Credit: Wikimedia Commons contributor Vesta/NASA WorldWind
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On Earth: Ries Crater, Germany

Ries Crater in southern Germany was formed from an impacting meteorite about 15 million years ago. It is an example of a "rampart crater," a crater whose material flowed due to the presence of volatile materials, such as water, when the meteorite hit. Although Ceres does not have craters that are exactly "rampart" in nature, some of the craters on Ceres such as Haulani do have flow features in their ejecta blankets -- the layers of rock that were overturned and deposited around the crater as during the impact event. "Ries also has clusters of pipe-like structures in the bedrock that are the basis for our understanding of the formation of pitted materials on Mars, Vesta, and Ceres," said Hanna Sizemore, research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.

Three kinds of landslides on Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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On Ceres: Landslides

Dawn has revealed many landslides on Ceres, which may have been shaped by the presence of water ice. This image shows three different kinds of landslides on Ceres. At left, Ghanan Crater hosts an example of a Type I landslide, which is relatively round and large and has thick deposits, or "toes," at its end. Type II and Type III features are shown in the middle and right of this image respectively. Scientists think Type I landslides form in areas where the ground is rich in ice, which may occur near Ceres' poles. Type II landslides are often thinner and longer than Type 1. Type III landslides form in ice-rich ejected material from impacts.

The Mud Creek landslide, California. Credit: USGS
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On Earth:

Landslides can occur anywhere on Earth where the ground along a slope becomes unstable, such as last year's landslide in northern California. A hillside called Mud Creek collapsed in May 2017 after the area had received substantial rainfall, increasing the amount of groundwater in the area. The way the rock and dirt slid down over Highway 1 into the ocean resembles the way the mixture of ice and rock skidded down Ghanan Crater on Ceres. In some cases, water or ice in the ground can increase the likeliness of landslide occurrence

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:

https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

More information about Dawn is available at the following sites:

https://www.nasa.gov/dawn

https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

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Written by Elizabeth Landau

News Media Contact

Gretchen McCartney

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-6215

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Watch This Space: NASA Administrator Talks Webb Science with Nobel Laureate

NASA Television will air a conversation about the progress and promise of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with Nobel Prize winner John Mather at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, July 25.

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NASA's 'Space Botanist' Gathers First Data

Just days after its successful installation on the International Space Station, NASA's newest Earth-observing mission, the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS), has collected its first science data on Earth's surface temperature.

ECOSTRESS will measure the temperature of plants from space, enabling researchers to determine how much water plants use and to study how droughts affect plant health.

The instrument was launched June 29 from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a SpaceX cargo resupply mission. It rode to orbit in the "trunk" of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, which berthed at the station on July 2. On July 5, ground controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston extracted ECOSTRESS from the trunk, robotically transferred it to the station's Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) and installed it. After a few days of testing and start-up activities, ECOSTRESS acquired its first-light image on July 9.

"Often satellite missions require weeks or months to produce data of the quality that we are already getting from ECOSTRESS," said the mission's principal investigator, Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. ECOSTRESS is one of a new class of low-cost, rapid-development NASA science instruments. The ECOSTRESS instrument was launched less than four years after the project was started.

The ECOSTRESS team is now checking out the instrument and acquiring preliminary science data, a process expected to take about a month. They have completed an initial calibration of the science data and are now validating the data by comparing them with similar measurements made at ground control sites. When this process is complete, ECOSTRESS will be ready to begin its one-year science mission.

JPL built and manages the ECOSTRESS mission for NASA's Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

For more information on ECOSTRESS, visit:

https://ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information on science activities aboard the space station, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/research_by_com_campaign

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Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-354-4269

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2018-172

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NASA Awards Facility Operations Support Contract

NASA has awarded a contract to COLSA Corporation of Huntsville, Alabama, to provide facility operations support services to the National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage (NCCIPS).

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Twenty Years of Planetary Defense

NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Enters Third Decade.

On March 11, 1998, asteroid astronomers around the world received an ominous message: new observational data on the recently discovered asteroid 1997 XF11 suggested there was a chance that the half-mile-wide (nearly one kilometer) object could hit Earth in 2028.

The message came from the Minor Planet Center, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the worldwide repository for such observations and initial determination of asteroid orbits. And although it was intended to alert only the very small astronomical community that hunts and tracks asteroids to call for more observations, the news spread quickly.

Most media outlets did not know what to make of the announcement, and mistakenly highlighted the prospect that Earth was doomed.

Three of the world's largest radio telescopes team up to show a rare double asteroid. 2017 YE5 is only the fourth binary near-Earth asteroid ever observed in which the two bodies are roughly the same size, and not touching. This video shows radar images of the pair gathered by Goldstone Solar System Radar, Arecibo Observatory and Green Bank Observatory.

Fortunately, it turned out that Earth was never in danger from 1997 XF11. After performing a more thorough orbit analysis with the available asteroid observations, Don Yeomans, then the leader of the Solar System Dynamics group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, along with his colleague Paul Chodas, concluded otherwise. "The 2028 impact was essentially impossible," said Chodas, who is now director of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), located at JPL.

"To this day we still get queries on the chances of XF11 impacting in 2028," Chodas said. "There is simply no chance of XF11 impacting our planet that year, or for the next 200 years."

Chodas knows this thanks to CNEOS' precise orbit calculations using observation data submitted to the Minor Planet Center by observatories all over the world that detect and track the motion of asteroids and comets. For the past two decades, CNEOS calculations have enabled NASA to become the world leader in these efforts, keeping close watch on all nearby asteroids and comets -- especially those that can cross Earth's orbit.

"We compute high-precision orbits for all asteroids and comets and map their positions in the Solar System, both forward in time to detect potential impacts, and backward to see where they've been in the sky," Chodas said. "We provide the best map of orbits for all known small bodies in the Solar System."

Mapping the Celestial Hazard

Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets in orbits that bring them into the inner solar system, within 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the Sun, and also within roughly 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth's orbit around the Sun.

The media frenzy around NEO 1997 XF11 demonstrated the need for clarity and precision in communicating with the public about the close passes by Earth of these objects, as well as "the importance of peer review before public statements like these are made," Chodas said.

NASA's original intent was to fulfill a 1998 Congressional request to detect and catalogue at least 90 percent of all NEOs larger than one kilometer in size (roughly two-thirds of a mile) within 10 years. To help reach the Congressional goal, NASA Headquarters requested that JPL establish a new office to work with the data provided by the International Astronomical Union-sanctioned Minor Planet Center for submission of all observations of asteroids and comets, and to coordinate with observatories operated by academic institutions around the United States, as well as U.S. Air Force space surveillance assets.

In the summer of 1998, NASA established the Near-Earth Object Observations Program and JPL became the home for the agency's research data and analysis on NEOs, the "Near-Earth Object Program Office." (To view the announcement regarding the creation of the Near-Earth Object Program Office, see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=5134)

In 2016, the office was renamed the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) in conjunction with the establishment of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For about 20 years, CNEOS has been NASA's central hub for accurately mapping the orbits of all the known NEOs, predicting their upcoming close approaches, reliably assessing their chances of impact to our planet, and delivering that information to both astronomers worldwide and the general public.

Predicting Close Approaches and Impacts: Sentry and Scout

The first and most important step in assessing the impact risk of an asteroid or comet is to determine whether any given object's orbit will cross Earth's orbit -- and then how close it will actually get to our planet. JPL was determining high-precision orbits for a few NEOs even before NASA launched its NEO Observations Program, and has since upgraded its orbit models to provide the most accurate assessment available for asteroid positions and orbits.

Observatories around the world take digital images of the sky to detect moving points of light (the asteroid or comet) over days, weeks, months (and even decades!), and then report the positions of these moving objects relative to the static background of stars to the Minor Planet Center. See "How a Speck of Light Becomes an Asteroid".The CNEOS scientists then use all this observation data to more precisely calculate an NEO's orbit and predict its motion forward in time for many years, looking for close approaches and potential impacts to the Earth, its Moon, and other planets.

A CNEOS system called "Sentry" searches ahead for all potential future Earth impact possibilities over the next hundred years -- for every known NEO. Sentry's impact monitoring runs continually using the latest CNEOS generated orbit models, and the results are stored online.In most cases so far, the probabilities of any potential impacts are extremely small, and in other cases, the objects themselves are so small -- less than 20 meters in size, or nearly 66 feet -- that they would almost certainly disintegrate even if they did enter Earth's atmosphere.

"If Sentry finds potential impacts for an object, we add it to our online 'impact risk' table, and asteroid observers can then prioritize that object for further observation," said Steve Chesley of JPL, a member of the CNEOS team who was the main developer of the Sentry system. "The more measurementsmade of the object's position over time, the better we can predict its future path."

"In most cases, the new measurements mean the object can be removed from the risk list because the uncertainties in the orbital path are reduced and the possibility of impact is ruled out," Chesley said.

More recently, CNEOS also developed a system called Scout to provide more immediate and automatic trajectory analyses for the most recently discovered objects, even before independent observatories confirm their discovery. Operating around the clock, the Scout system not only notifies observers of the highest priority objects to observe at any given time, it also immediately alerts the Planetary Defense Coordination Office of any possible imminent impacts within the next few hours or days.A recent example is the Scout-predicted impact of the small asteroid 2018 LA over Botswana, Africa.

More Hunting to Do

With the addition of more capable NASA-funded asteroid surveys over the years, NASA's NEO Observations Program is responsible for over 90 percent of near-Earth asteroid and comet discoveries. There are now over 18,000 known NEOs and the discovery rate averages about 40 per week.

Although the original Congressional goal from 1998 has been exceeded and much progress has been made in asteroid discovery and tracking over the past two decades, the work isn't over. In 2005, Congress established a new, much more ambitious goal for the NEO Observations Program -- to discover 90 percent of the NEOs down to the much smaller size of 450 feet (140 meters), and to do so by the year 2020 (https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/109th-congress/house-report/158/1).

These smaller asteroids may not present a threat of global catastrophe if they impact Earth, but they could still cause massive regional devastation and loss of life, especially if they occur near a metropolitan area. CNEOS continues to make improvements to its orbital analysis tools, image and graphic presentation capabilities, and updates of its websites to quickly and accurately provide the very latest information on NEOs to PDCO, the astronomical community and the public.

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 CNEOS, asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

For more information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense

For asteroid and comet news and updates, followAsteroidWatchon Twitter:

twitter.com/AsteroidWatch

News Media Contact

DC Agle

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818-393-9011

agle@jpl.nasa.gov

JoAnna Wendel

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1003

Joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

2018-171

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Radiation Maps of Jupiter's Moon Europa: Key to Future Missions

Map of Europa's surface showing the regions that receive the highest radiation dose (pink). Image credit: U.S. Geological Survey, NASA/JPL-Caltech, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Nature Astronomy

New comprehensive mapping of the radiation pummeling Jupiter's icy moon Europa reveals where scientists should look -- and how deep they'll have to go -- when searching for signs of habitability and biosignatures.

Since NASA's Galileo mission yielded strong evidence of a global ocean underneath Europa's icy shell in the 1990s, scientists have considered that moon one of the most promising places in our solar system to look for ingredients to support life. There's even evidence that the salty water sloshing around the moon's interior makes its way to the surface.

By studying this material from the interior, scientists developing future missions hope to learn more about the possible habitability of Europa's ocean.However, Europa's surface is bombarded by a constant and intense blast of radiation from Jupiter. This radiation can destroy or alter material transported up to the surface, making it more difficult for scientists to know if it actually represents conditions in Europa's ocean.

As scientists plan for upcoming exploration of Europa, they have grappled with many unknowns: Where is the radiation most intense? How deep do the energetic particles go? How does radiation affect what's on the surface and beneath - including potential chemical signs, or biosignatures, that could imply the presence of life.

A new scientific study, published today in Nature Astronomy, represents the most complete modeling and mapping of radiation at Europa and offers key pieces to the puzzle. The lead author is Tom Nordheim, research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

"If we want to understand what's going on at the surface of Europa and how that links to the ocean underneath, we need to understand the radiation," Nordheim said. "When we examine materials that have come up from the subsurface, what are we looking at? Does this tell us what is in the ocean, or is this what happened to the materials after they have been radiated?"

Using data from Galileo's flybys of Europa two decades ago and electron measurements from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, Nordheim and his team looked closely at the electrons blasting the moon's surface. They found that the radiation doses vary by location. The harshest radiation is concentrated in zones around the equator, and the radiation lessens closer to the poles.

Mapped out, the harsh radiation zones appear as oval-shaped regions, connected at the narrow ends, that cover more than half of the moon.

"This is the first prediction of radiation levels at each point on Europa's surface and is important information for future Europa missions," said Chris Paranicas, a co-author from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

Now scientists know where to find regions least altered by radiation, which could be crucial information for the JPL-led Europa Clipper, NASA's mission to orbit Jupiter and monitor Europa with about 45 close flybys. The spacecraft may launch as early as 2022 and will carry cameras, spectrometers, plasma and radar instruments to investigate the composition of the moon's surface, its ocean, and material that has been ejected from the surface.

In his new paper, Nordheim didn't stop with a two-dimensional map. He went deeper, gauging how far below the surface the radiation penetrates, and building 3D models of the most intense radiation on Europa. The results tell us how deep scientists need to dig or drill, during a potential future Europa lander mission, to find any biosignatures that might be preserved.

The answer varies, from 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) in the highest-radiation zones - down to less than 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) deep in regions of Europa at middle- and high-latitudes, toward the moon's poles.

To reach that conclusion, Nordheim tested the effect of radiation on amino acids, basic building blocks for proteins, to figure out how Europa's radiation would affect potential biosignatures. Amino acids are among the simplest molecules that qualify as a potential biosignature, the paper notes.

"The radiation that bombards Europa's surface leaves a fingerprint," said Kevin Hand, co-author of the new research and projectscientist for the potential Europa Lander mission. "If we know what that fingerprint looks like, we can better understand the nature of any organics and possible biosignatures that might be detected with future missions, be they spacecraft that fly by or land on Europa.

Europa Clipper's mission team is examining possible orbit paths, and proposed routes pass over many regions of Europa that experience lower levels of radiation, Hand said. "That's good news for looking at potentially fresh ocean material that has not been heavily modified by the fingerprint of radiation."

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Europa Clipper mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about NASA's Europa Clipper mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/europa

News Media Contact

Gretchen McCartney

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-6215

gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 202-358-1003

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

2018-170

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'Storm Chasers' on Mars Searching for Dusty Secrets

Storm chasing takes luck and patience on Earth -- and even more so on Mars.

For scientists watching the Red Planet from data gathered by NASA's orbiters, the past month has been a windfall. "Global" dust storms, where a runaway series of storms creates a dust cloud so large it envelops the planet, only appear every six to eight years (that's three to four Mars years). Scientists still don't understand why or how exactly these storms form and evolve.

In June, one of these dust events rapidly engulfed the planet. Scientists first observed a smaller-scale dust storm on May 30. By June 20, it had gone global.

For the Opportunity rover, that meant a sudden drop in visibility from a clear, sunny day to that of an overcast one. Because Opportunity runs on solar energy, scientists had to suspend science activities to preserve the rover's batteries. As of July 18th, no response has been received from the rover.

Luckily, all that dust acts as an atmospheric insulator, keeping nighttime temperatures from dropping down to lower than what Opportunity can handle. But the nearly 15-year-old rover isn't out of the woods yet: it could take weeks, or even months, for the dust to start settling. Based on the longevity of a 2001 global storm, NASA scientists estimate it may be early September before the haze has cleared enough for Opportunity to power up and call home.

When the skies begin to clear, Opportunity's solar panels may be covered by a fine film of dust. That could delay a recovery of the rover as it gathers energy to recharge its batteries. A gust of wind would help, but isn't a requirement for a full recovery..

While the Opportunity team waits in earnest to hear from the rover, scientists on other Mars missions have gotten a rare chance to study this head-scratching phenomenon.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiters are all tailoring their observations of the Red Planet to study this global storm and learn more about Mars' weather patterns. Meanwhile, the Curiosity rover is studying the dust storm from the Martian surface.

Here's Here's how each mission is currently studying the dust storm, and what we might learn from it:

Mars Odyssey

With the THEMIS instrument (Thermal Emission Imaging System), scientists can track Mars' surface temperature, atmospheric temperature, and the amount of dust in the atmosphere. This allows them to watch the dust storm grow, evolve, and dissipate over time.

"This is one of the largest weather events that we've seen on Mars," since spacecraft observations began in the 1960s, said Michael Smith, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland who works on the THEMIS instrument. "Having another example of a dust storm really helps us to understand what's going on."

Since the dust storm began, the THEMIS team has increased the frequency of global atmospheric observations from every 10 days to twice per week, Smith said. One mystery they're still trying to solve: How these dust storms go global. "Every Mars year, during the dusty season, there are a lot of local- or regional-scale storms that cover one area of the planet," Smith said. But scientists aren't yet sure how these smaller storms sometimes grow to end up encircling the entire planet.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has two instruments studying the dust storm. Each day, the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) maps the entire planet in mid-afternoon to track the evolution of the storm. Meanwhile, MRO's Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) instrument measures how the atmosphere's temperature changes with altitude. Since the end of May, the instruments have observed the onset and rapid expansion of a dust storm on Mars.

With these data, scientists are studying how the dust storm changes the planet's atmospheric temperatures. Just as in Earth's atmosphere, changing temperature on Mars can affect wind patterns and even the circulation of the entire atmosphere. This provides a powerful feedback: Solar heating of the dust lofted into the atmosphere changes temperatures, which changes winds, which may amplify the storm by lifting more dust from the surface.

Scientists want to know the details of the storm -- where is the air rising or falling? How do the atmospheric temperatures now compare to a storm-less year? And as with Mars Odyssey, the MRO team wants to know how these dust storms go global.

"The very fact that you can start with something that's a local storm, no bigger than a small [U.S.] state, and then trigger something that raises more dust and produces a haze that covers almost the entire planet is remarkable," said Rich Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, the project scientist for MRO.

Scientists want to find out why these storms arise every few years, which is hard to do without a long record of such events. It'd be as if aliens were observing Earth and seeing the climate effects of El Niño over many years of observations -- they'd wonder why some regions get extra rainy and some areas get extra dry in a seemingly regular pattern.

MAVEN

Ever since the MAVEN orbiter entered Mars' orbit, "one of the things we've been waiting for is a global dust storm," said Bruce Jakosky, the MAVEN orbiter's principle investigator.

But MAVEN isn't studying the dust storm itself. Rather, the MAVEN team wants to study how the dust storm affects Mars' upper atmosphere, about 62 miles (more than 100 kilometers) above the surface -- where the dust doesn't even reach. MAVEN's mission is to figure out what happened to Mars' early atmosphere. We know that at some point billions of years ago, liquid water pooled and ran along Mars' surface, which means that its atmosphere must have been thicker and more insulating, similar to Earth's. Since MAVEN arrived at Mars in 2014, its investigations have found that this atmosphere may have been stripped away by a torrent of solar wind over several hundred million years, between 3.5 and 4.0 billion years ago.

But there are still nuances to figure out, such as how dust storms like the current one affect how atmospheric molecules escape into space, Jakosky said. For instance, the dust storm acts as an atmospheric insulator, trapping heat from the Sun. Does this heating change the way molecules escape the atmosphere? It is also likely that, as the atmosphere warms, more water vapor rises high enough to be broken down by sunlight, with the solar wind sweeping the hydrogen atoms into space, Jakosky said.

The team won't have answers for a while yet, but each of MAVEN's five orbits per day will continue to provide invaluable data.

Curiosity

Most of NASA's spacecraft are studying the dust storm from above. The Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover has a unique perspective: the nuclear-powered science machine is largely immune to the darkened skies, allowing it to collect science from within the beige veil enveloping the planet.

"We're working double-duty right now," said JPL's Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist. "Our newly recommissioned drill is acquiring a fresh rock sample. But we are also using instruments to study how the dust storm evolves."

Curiosity has a number of "eyes" that can determine the abundance and size of dust particles based on how they scatter and absorb light. That includes its Mastcam, ChemCam, and an ultraviolet sensor on REMS, its suite of weather instruments. REMS can also help study atmospheric tides -- shifts in pressure that move as waves across the entire planet's thin air. These tides change drastically based on where the dust is globally, not just inside Gale crater.

The global storm may also reveal secrets about Martian dust devils and winds. Dust devils can occur when the planet's surface is hotter than the air above it. Heating generates whirls of air, some of which pick up dust and become dust devils. During a dust storm, there's less direct sunlight and lower daytime temperatures; this might mean fewer devils swirling across the surface.

Even new drilling can advance dust storm science: watching the small piles of loose material created by Curiosity's drill is the best way of monitoring winds.

Scientists think the dust storm will last at least a couple of months. Every time you spot Mars in the sky in the weeks ahead, remember how much data scientists are gathering to better understand the mysterious weather of the Red Planet.

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1003

Joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

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NASA Online Toolkit: Commercial Use of Satellite Data

While NASA's policy of free and open remote-sensing data has long benefited the scientific community, other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, it has significant untapped potential for commercialization. NASA's Technology Transfer program has created an online resource to promote commercial use of this data and the software tools needed to work with it.

With the Remote Sensing Toolkit, users will now be able to find, analyze and utilize the most relevant data for their research, business projects or conservation efforts. The toolkit provides a simple system that quickly identifies relevant sources based on user input. The toolkit will help users search for data, as well as ready-to-use tools and code to build new tools.

"This new tool makes finding and using NASA satellite data easier than ever before, and we hope it sparks innovation among the entrepreneurial community and leads to further commercialization of NASA technology and benefits people across the world," said Daniel Lockney, NASA's Technology Transfer program executive. "Our mission to bring NASA technology down to Earth is expanding with the release of this remote sensing toolkit."

Through its constellation of Earth observation satellites, NASA collects petabytes of data each year. The variety of open source tools created to access, analyze and utilize the data from these satellites is familiar to millions of science users, but accessing and utilizing this data remains daunting for many potential commercial users.

For example, NASA's remote sensing data and tools are spread out across dozens of sites. The NASA Technology Transfer program reviewed more than 50 websites and found that no source provided a comprehensive collection of information or a single access point to begin a search.

While the Remote Sensing Toolkit is new, using NASA satellite data to create commercial products isn't.

"Over the years, many organizations around the world have found innovative ways to turn NASA satellite data into beneficial information products here on Earth," said Kevin Murphy of NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. "Remote Sensing Toolkit will help grow the number of users who put NASA's free and open data archive to work for people."

NASA Spinoff LandViewer, a subscription-based software, relies on a variety of data, including NASA satellite data, to provide daily updates on the state of corn vegetation. The result is a prediction of future corn production on national, state and county scales.

The Technology Transfer program will host a tutorial of Remote Sensing Toolkit. To participate, potential users should sign up to be notified of future webinars.

NASA's Technology Transfer program, managed by the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate, ensures technologies developed for missions in exploration and discovery are broadly available to the public, maximizing the benefit to the nation.

Examples of some of these technologies include data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, from the ASTER mission, that's being used in a snowboarding game to create real-life mountains. This and other examples are featured in a Tumblr post at:

https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/176030762329/5-examples-of-how-our-satellite-data-is-helping

When Electronic Arts (EA) decided to make SSX, a snowboarding video game, it faced challenges in creating realistic-looking mountains. The solution was our ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map, made available by our Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which EA used to create 28 real-life mountains from 9 different ranges for its award-winning game.

For more information about the Remote Sensing Toolkit and NASA's Technology Transfer program, visit:

https://technology.nasa.gov/

News Media Contact

Gina Anderson

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1160

gina.n.anderson@nasa.gov

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-354-4269

esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-168

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NASA Brings Latest Aerospace Technologies to AirVenture 2018

Visitors to AirVenture Oshkosh 2018 can get a close look at the latest in NASA aerospace technology during the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual airshow Monday, July 23, through Sunday, July 29, at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

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NASA Launches Channel for Roku

There’s a new way for people to learn about NASA’s exciting missions and thought-provoking discoveries: The agency now has a channel for Roku digital media streaming devices.

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NASA Invites Media to Preview Briefing on Spacecraft that will “Touch” Sun

Media are invited to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a preview briefing on the agency’s Parker Solar Probe at 1 p.m. EDT Friday, July 20. The event will air live on NASA Television, the agency’s website and Facebook Live.

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NASA Debuts Online Toolkit to Promote Commercial Use of Satellite Data

While NASA’s policy of free and open remote-sensing data has long benefited the scientific community, other government agencies and nonprofit organizations, it has significant untapped potential for commercialization.

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NASA Television, Website to Air Critical Conversations on Science in Space

NASA will join counterparts from across government, industry, academia and international organizations for an indepth conversation about science on the International Space Station Monday, July 23, through Thursday, July 26, in San Francisco.

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NASA, French Aerospace Lab to Collaborate on Sonic Boom Prediction Research

NASA and France’s Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales (ONERA), the French national aerospace research center, signed a research agreement Wednesday that could make supersonic passenger flights over land practical, dramatically reducing travel time in the United States or anywhere in the world.

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Dusk for Dawn: Mission of Many Firsts to Gather More Data in Home Stretch

Pasadena Conference to Include New Insight into Dwarf Planet Ceres

As NASA's Dawn spacecraft prepares to wrap up its groundbreaking 11-year mission, which has included two successful extended missions at Ceres, it will continue to explore -- collecting images and other data.

Within a few months, Dawn is expected to run out of a key fuel, hydrazine, which feeds thrusters that control its orientation and keeps it communicating with Earth. When that happens, sometime between August and October, the spacecraft will stop operating, but it will remain in orbit around dwarf planet Ceres.

Dawn is the only spacecraft to orbit two deep-space destinations. It has given us new, up-close views of Ceres and Vesta, the largest bodies between Mars and Jupiter. During 14 months in orbit from 2011 to 2012, Dawn studied Vesta from its surface to its core. It then pulled off an unprecedented maneuver by leaving orbit and traveling through the main asteroid belt for more than two years to reach and orbit Ceres, which it has been investigating since 2015.

At Ceres, the spacecraft discovered brilliant, salty deposits decorating the dwarf planet like a smattering of diamonds. The science behind these bright spots is even more compelling: they are mainly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride that somehow made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust.

These discoveries were fueled by the tremendous efficiency of ion propulsion. Dawn wasn't the first spacecraft to use ion propulsion, familiar to science-fiction fans as well as space enthusiasts, but it pushed the limits of this advanced propulsion's capabilities and stamina.

"Dawn's unique mission to orbit and explore two strange new worlds would have been impossible without ion propulsion," said Marc Rayman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who has served as Dawn's mission director, chief engineer and project manager. "Dawn is truly an interplanetary spaceship, and it has been outstandingly productive as it introduced these fascinating and mysterious worlds to Earth."

These days, near the end of Dawn's second extended mission at Ceres, the spacecraft continues to wow us week after week, with very close photos shot from only 22 miles (35 kilometers) above the dwarf planet -- about three times the altitude of a passenger jet.

But Wait, There's More: New Science to Come

Although the Dawn mission is winding down, the science is not. Besides the high-resolution images, the spacecraft is collecting gamma ray and neutron spectra, infrared and visible spectra, and gravity data. The observations focus on the area around Occator and Urvara craters, with the main goal of understanding the evolution of Ceres, and testing for possible ongoing geology.

"The new images of Occator Crater and the surrounding areas have exceeded expectations, revealing beautiful, alien landscapes," said Carol Raymond of JPL, principal investigator of the Dawn mission. "Ceres' unique surface appears to be shaped by impacts into its volatile-rich crust, resulting in intriguing, complex geology, as we can see in the new high-resolution mosaics of Cerealia Facula and Vinalia Faculae."

The first results of this mission phase, which started in early June, are being presented this week at the Committee on SPAce Research (COSPAR) meeting in Pasadena. Raymond and JPL scientist Jennifer Scully will offer new information on the relationships between bright and dark materials on the floor of Occator Crater, which show impact processes, landslides and cryovolcanism.

Dawn scientists are using new high-resolution data from Dawn to test and refine hypotheses about Occator crater's formation and evolution."Observations, modeling and laboratory studies helped us conclude that the bright spots are either formed by impacts interacting with the crust, or that a reservoir of briny melt contributed to their formation," said Scully.

The new images so far support the hypothesis that exposure of subsurface material in that region is ongoing, and that it is geologically active, feeding from a deep reservoir. Eleonora Ammannito of the Italian Space Agency, deputy lead for the Dawn visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, will present updated maps at the conference showing the distribution of briny materials across Ceres' surface.

Also at COSPAR, Dawn flight team member Dan Grebow of JPL will describe Dawn's final orbit, designed to abide by NASA's planetary protection protocols.

Low-altitude images collected by Dawn are posted regularly to the mission's web page here.

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:

https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

More information about Dawn is available at the following sites:

https://www.nasa.gov/dawn

https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

News Media Contact

Gretchen McCartney Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-6215 gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel NASA Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1726 / 202-358-1003 dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov 2018-167

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NASA Juno data indicate another possible volcano on Jupiter moon Io

Data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft using its Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument point to a new heat source close to the south pole of Io that could indicate a previously undiscovered volcano on the small moon of Jupiter. The infrared data were collected on Dec. 16, 2017, when Juno was about 290,000 miles (470,000 kilometers) away from the moon.

"The new Io hotspot JIRAM picked up is about 200 miles (300 kilometers) from the nearest previously mapped hotspot," said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. "We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously discovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature."

The Juno team will continue to evaluate data collected on the Dec. 16 flyby, as well as JIRAM data that will be collected during future (and even closer) flybys of Io. Past NASA missions of exploration that have visited the Jovian system (Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons), along with ground-based observations, have located over 150 active volcanoes on Io so far. Scientists estimate that about another 250 or so are waiting to be discovered.

Juno has logged nearly 146 million miles (235 million kilometers) since entering Jupiter's orbit on July 4, 2016. Juno's 13th science pass will be on July 16.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. The Italian Space Agency (ASI), contributed two instruments, a Ka-band frequency translator (KaT) and the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM). Lockheed Martin Space, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

More information on the Juno mission is available at:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu

The public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

https://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno

https://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno

News Media Contact

DC Agle

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-9011

agle@jpl.nasa.gov

JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1003

joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

Deb Schmid

Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio

210-522-2254

dschmid@swri.org

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Students from Missouri, Mississippi to Call Space Station

Students in St. Louis and southern Mississippi will get to ask questions of NASA astronauts on the International Space Station during two events next week as part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.

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NASA's Cassini Coverage Lands an Emmy Nomination

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences nominated NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for Outstanding Original Interactive Program for its coverage of the Cassini mission's Grand Finale at Saturn, including news, web, education, television and social media efforts.

In 2017, after nearly 20 years in space and 13 years revealing the wonders of Saturn, NASA's Cassini orbiter was running out of fuel. As a final act, Cassini began a whole new mission -- its Grand Finale. This journey into the unknown would end with a spectacular plunge into the planet. JPL created a multi-month digital campaign to celebrate the mission's science and engineering accomplishments and communicate why the spacecraft must meet its end in the skies of Saturn.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences nominated NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for outstanding original interactive program for its coverage of the Cassini mission's Grand Finale at Saturn, including news, web, education, television and social media efforts.

Cassini's first, daring dive into the unexplored space between the giant planet and its rings kicked off the campaign on April 26, 2017. It culminated on Sept. 15, 2017, with live coverage of Cassini's plunge into Saturn's atmosphere, with the spacecraft sending back science to the very last second.

The multi-faceted campaign included regular updates on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and the Cassini mission website; multiple live social, web and TV broadcasts during which reporter and public questions were answered; a dramatic short film to communicate the mission's story and preview its endgame; multiple 360-degree videos, including NASA's first 360-degree livestream of a mission event from inside JPL mission control; an interactive press kit; a steady drumbeat of articles to keep fans updated with news and features about the people behind the mission; state-standards aligned educational materials; a celebration of art by amateur space enthusiasts; and software to provide real-time tracking of the spacecraft, down to its final transmission to Earth.

The Primetime Emmys will be awarded by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles on Sept. 17. The Creative Arts Emmys, which includes interactive awards, will be presented during a separate ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 15, at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.

More information about Cassini:

https://www.nasa.gov/cassini

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

News Media Contact

Veronica McGregor

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-9452

veronica.c.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 202-358-1003

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

2018-165

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