NASA to Air Administrator’s Message Marking Agency 60th Anniversary

NASA will air a recorded message from Administrator Jim Bridenstine at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, Oct. 1 to commemorate the agency’s founding 60 years ago. The message will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

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‘Year of Education on Station’ Wraps up with Live Earth-to-Space Call Between Students, NASA Astronaut in Orbit

NASA is celebrating the conclusion of its Year of Education on Station (YES) initiative with a final educational Earth-to-space call, allowing students and others to speak to an astronaut living and working aboard the International Space Station.

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NASA Awards Contract for Archive Center Operations

NASA has awarded a contract to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks for the continued development and operation of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) for NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System.

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NASA Awards Contract for Custodial Services

NASA has awarded a contract to Brevard Achievement Center, Inc., of Rockledge, Florida, for custodial services at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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NASA Awards Contract for Climate Pathfinder Mission Instrument

NASA has awarded a contract to the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) for development of a reflected solar spectrometer for the agency’s Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder mission.

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NASA TV to Air Live Coverage of International Space Station Crew Landing

Three of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, including two NASA astronauts, are scheduled to return to Earth on Thursday, Oct. 4.

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JPL Airborne Mission Is One of Five New Earth Ventures

Five new NASA Earth science campaigns, including one from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will take to the field starting in 2020 to investigate a range of pressing research questions, from what drives intense East Coast snowfall events to the impact of small-scale ocean currents on global climate.

These studies will explore important, but not-well-understood, aspects of Earth system processes. They were competitively selected as part of NASA's Earth Venture-class program. This is NASA's third series of Earth Venture suborbital investigations, which are regularly solicited, sustained observation projects first recommended by the National Research Council in 2007. The first set of five projects was selected in 2010, and the second in 2014.

"These innovative investigations tackle difficult scientific questions that require detailed, targeted field observations combined with data collected by our fleet of Earth-observing satellites," said Jack Kaye, associate director for research in NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington.

The five newly selected Earth Venture investigations are:

• River deltas and sea level rise -- Marc Simard of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will lead the Delta-X investigation to better understand the natural processes that maintain and build land in major river deltas threatened by rising seas. The project will improve models that predict loss of coastal land from sea level rise by improving estimates of how deltas add land -- a process that involves trapping sediments and creating organic soils as plants grow. Delta-X will focus on the Mississippi River Delta using instruments on three NASA research aircraft.

• Intense snowfall events -- Lynn McMurdie of the University of Washington will lead the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms project to study the formation of snow bands in East Coast winter storms. Better understanding of the mechanisms of snow band formation and the factors that influence the location of the most intense snowfall will help improve forecasts of these extreme weather events. This study will involve flights of NASA's ER-2 and P-3B research aircraft over the northeastern United States.

• Aerosols changing clouds -- Armin Sorooshian of the University of Arizona will lead the Aerosol Cloud Meteorology Interactions over the Western Atlantic Experiment to identify how aerosol particles change cloud properties in ways that affect Earth's climate system. The investigation will focus on marine boundary layer clouds over the western North Atlantic Ocean that have a critical role in our planet's energy balance. Two NASA research aircraft, an HU-25 Falcon and a B-200 King Air, will fly from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, to gather measurements from above, below and within.

• Impact of strong storms on stratosphere -- Kenneth Bowman of Texas A&M University will lead the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere project to investigate how strong summertime convective storms over North America can change the chemistry of the stratosphere. These storms regularly penetrate deep into the lower stratosphere, carrying pollutants that can change the chemical composition of this atmospheric layer, including ozone levels. Flights of NASA's ER-2 high-altitude aircraft will be based in Salina, Kansas.

• Ocean heating of the atmosphere -- Thomas Farrar of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute will lead the Submesoscale Ocean Dynamics and Vertical Transport investigation to explore the potentially large influence that small-scale ocean eddies have on the exchange of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere. The project will collect a benchmark data set of climate and biological variables in the upper ocean that influence this exchange. Measurements will be collected by research aircraft and shipborne instruments 200 miles off the coast of San Francisco.

Six NASA centers and 27 educational institutions are participating in these five Earth Venture projects. The five-year investigations were selected from 30 proposals. The Delta-X project is funded at a total cost of no more than $15 million; each of the other projects is funded at no more than $30 million.

Earth Venture investigations are part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program, managed at Langley for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Competitively selected orbital missions and field campaigns in this program provide innovative approaches to address Earth science research with frequent windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities.

NASA uses the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. The agency's observations of Earth's complex natural environment are critical to understanding how our planet's natural resources and climate are changing now and could change in the future.

For more on NASA's Earth science activities, visit:

https://nasa.gov/earth

News Media Contact

Steve Cole

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-0918

Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4269

Esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-226

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NASA Tests Tiny Satellites to Track Global Storms

How many times have you stepped outside into a surprise rainstorm without an umbrella and wished that weather forecasts were more accurate?

A satellite no bigger than a shoebox may one day help. Small enough to fit inside a backpack, the aptly named RainCube (Radar in a CubeSat) uses experimental technology to see storms by detecting rain and snow with very small instruments. The people behind the miniature mission celebrated after RainCube sent back its first images of a storm over Mexico in a technology demonstration in August. Its second wave of images in September caught the first rainfall of Hurricane Florence.

The small satellite is a prototype for a possible fleet of RainCubes that could one day help monitor severe storms, lead to improving the accuracy of weather forecasts and track climate change over time.

The same storm captured by RainCube is seen here in infrared from a single, large weather satellite, NOAA's GOES (Geoweather Operational Environmental Satellite). Image Credit: NOAA
Larger view

"We don't have any way of measuring how water and air move in thunderstorms globally," said Graeme Stephens, director of the Center of Climate Sciences at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We just don't have any information about that at all, yet it's so essential for predicting severe weather and even how rains will change in a future climate."

RainCube is a type of "tech demo," an experiment to see if shrinking a weather radar into a low-cost, miniature satellite could still provide a real-time look inside storms. RainCube "sees" objects by using radar, much as a bat uses sonar. The satellite's umbrella-like antenna sends out chirps, or specialized radar signals, that bounce off raindrops, bringing back a picture of what the inside of the storm looks like.

Engineers like Principal Investigator Eva Peral had to figure out a way to help a small spacecraft send a signal strong enough to peer into a storm. "The radar signal penetrates the storm, and then the radar receives back an echo," said Peral. "As the radar signal goes deeper into the layers of the storm and measures the rain at those layers, we get a snapshot of the activity inside the storm."

Seeing the Bigger Picture

RainCube was deployed into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station in July. The first images it sent back were from an area above Mexico, where it took a snapshot of a developing storm in August.

"There's a plethora of ground-based experiments that have provided an enormous amount of information, and that's why our weather forecasts nowadays are not that bad," said Simone Tanelli, the co-investigator for RainCube. "But they don't provide a global view. Also, there are weather satellites that provide such a global view, but what they are not telling you is what's happening inside the storm. And that's where the processes that make a storm grow and/or decay happen."

But RainCube is not meant to fulfill a mission of tracking storms all by itself. It is just the first demonstration that a mini-rain radar could work.

Because RainCube is miniaturized, making it less expensive to launch, many more of the satellites could be sent into orbit. Flying together like geese, they could track storms, relaying updated information on them every few minutes. Eventually, they could yield data to help evaluate and improve weather models that predict the movement of rain, snow, sleet and hail.

"We actually will end up doing much more interesting insightful science with a constellation rather than with just one of them," Stephens said. "What we're learning in Earth sciences is that space and time coverage is more important than having a really expensive satellite instrument that just does one thing."

And that future seems closer now that RainCube and other Earth-observing CubeSats like it have proved they can work.

"What RainCube offers on the one hand is a demonstration of measurements that we currently have in space today," said Stephens. "But what it really demonstrates is the potential for an entirely new and different way of observing Earth with many small radars. That will open up a whole new vista in viewing the hydrological cycle of Earth."

RainCube is a technology-demonstration mission to enable Ka-band precipitation radar technologies on a low-cost, quick-turnaround platform. It is sponsored by NASA's Earth Science Technology Office through the InVEST-15 program. JPL is working with Tyvak Nanosatellite Systems, Inc. in Irvine, California, to fly the RainCube mission.

News Media Contact

Arielle Samuelson

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307

arielle.a.samuelson@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-225

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NASA Administrator Talks Training, Future Missions with Newest Astronaut Class

NASA’s newest class of astronaut trainees will join agency Administrator Jim Bridenstine Thursday, Sept. 27, to talk about their experiences in the training program, hopes for future missions, and more, in a live episode of Watch This Space.

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NASA Extends Chandra Operations, Science Support Contract

NASA has awarded a contract extension to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to continue operations and science support for the agency's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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New Airborne Campaigns to Explore Snowstorms, River Deltas, Climate

Five new NASA Earth science campaigns will take to the field starting in 2020 to investigate a range of pressing research questions, from what drives intense East Coast snowfall events to the impact of small-scale ocean currents on global climate.

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Opportunity Emerges in a Dusty Picture

NASA still hasn't heard from the Opportunity rover, but at least we can see it again.

A new image produced by HiRISE, a high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), shows a small object on the slopes of the Red Planet's Perseverance Valley. That object is Opportunity, which was descending into the Martian valley when a dust storm swept over the region a little more than 100 days ago.

The storm was one of several that stirred up enough dust to enshroud most of the Red Planet and block sunlight from reaching the surface. The lack of sunlight caused the solar-powered Opportunity to go into hibernation.

The rover's team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, hasn't heard from it since. On Sept. 11, JPL began increasing the frequency of commands it beams to the 14-year-old rover.

The tau -- a measurement of how much sunlight reaches the surface -- over Opportunity was estimated to be a little higher than 10 during some points during the dust storm. The tau has steadily fallen in the last several months. On Thursday, Sept. 20, when this image was taken, tau was estimated to be about 1.3 by MRO's Mars Color Imager camera.

This image was produced from about 166 miles (267 kilometers) above the Martian surface. The white box marks a 154-foot-wide (47-meter-wide) area centered on the rover.

The University of Arizona in Tucson operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more, visit:

https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_056955_1775

Updates about Opportunity can be found here:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status.html

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-224

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NASA Study Untangles Smoke, Pollution Effects on Clouds

A new NASA-led study helps answer decades-old questions about the role of smoke and human-caused air pollution on clouds and rainfall. Looking specifically at deep convective clouds -- tall clouds like thunderclouds, formed by warm air rising -- the study shows that smoky air makes it harder for these clouds to grow. Pollution, on the other hand, energizes their growth, but only if the pollution isn't heavy. Extreme pollution is likely to shut down cloud growth.

Researchers led by scientist Jonathan Jiang of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used observational data from two NASA satellites to investigate the effects of smoke and human-made air pollutants at different concentrations on deep convective clouds.

The two satellites -- the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) and CloudSat -- orbited on the same track only a few seconds apart from 2006 until this year. CloudSat uses a radar to measure cloud locations and heights worldwide, and CALIPSO uses an instrument called a lidar to measure smoke, dust, pollution and other microscopic particles in the air, which are collectively referred to as aerosols, at the same locations at almost the same time. The combined data sets allow scientists to study how aerosol particles affect clouds.

CALIPSO is able to classify aerosols into several types, a capability which was improved two years ago when the CALIPSO mission team developed improved data-processing techniques. At about the same time, the CloudSat team also improved its classification of the cloud types. Jiang's team knew that these improvements had the potential to clarify how different aerosols affect the ability of clouds to grow. It took him and his colleagues about two years to go through both data sets, choose the best five-year period and Earth regions to study, and do the analysis.

Clouds typically cannot form without some aerosols, because water vapor in the air does not easily condense into liquid water or ice unless it comes in contact with an aerosol particle. But there are many types of aerosols -- not only the ones studied here but volcanic ash, sea salt and pollen, for example -- with a wide range of sizes, colors, locations and other characteristics. All of these characteristics affect the way aerosols interact with clouds. Even the same type of aerosol may have different effects at different altitudes in the atmosphere or at different concentrations of particles.

Smoke particles absorb heat radiation emitted by the ground. This increases the temperature of the smoke particles, which can then warm the air. At the same time they block incoming sunlight, which keeps the ground cooler. That reduces the temperature difference between the ground and the air. For clouds to form, the ground needs to be warmer and the air cooler so that moisture on the ground can evaporate, rise and condense higher in the atmosphere. By narrowing the temperature gap between the ground and the air, smoke suppresses cloud formation and growth.

Human-pollutant aerosols like sulfates and nitrates, on the other hand, do not absorb much heat radiation. In moderate concentrations, they add more particles to the atmosphere for water to condense onto, enabling clouds to grow taller. If pollution is very heavy, however, the sheer number of particles in the sky blocks incoming sunlight -- an effect often visible in the world's most polluted cities. That cools the ground just as smoke aerosols do, inhibiting the formation of clouds.

The scientists also studied dust aerosols and found that their characteristics varied so much from place to place that they could either suppress or energize cloud formation. "It's about the complexity in dust color and size," Jiang said. "Sahara dust may be lighter, while dust from an Asian desert might likely be darker." A blanket of lighter-colored or smaller dust scatters incoming sunlight while not warming the air. Larger or darker dust particles absorb sunlight and warm the air.

The paper in Nature Communications is titled "Contrasting Effects on Deep Convective Clouds by Different Types of Aerosols." Coauthors are from UCLA; Caltech in Pasadena, California; the University of Colorado, Boulder; NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; and the University of Wyoming, Laramie.

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

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818-354-4269

Esprit.Smith@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA's Earth Science News Team

2018-223

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Dust Storms on Titan Spotted for the First Time

Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed what appear to be giant dust storms in equatorial regions of Saturn's moon Titan. The discovery, described in a paper published on Sept. 24 in Nature Geoscience, makes Titan the third Solar System body, in addition to Earth and Mars, where dust storms have been observed.

The observation is helping scientists to better understand the fascinating and dynamic environment of Saturn's largest moon.

"Titan is a very active moon," said Sebastien Rodriguez, an astronomer at the Université Paris Diderot, France, and the paper's lead author. "We already know that about its geology and exotic hydrocarbon cycle. Now we can add another analogy with Earth and Mars: the active dust cycle, in which organic dust can be raised from large dune fields around Titan's equator."

Titan is an intriguing world -- in ways quite similar to Earth. In fact, it is the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere and the only celestial body other than our planet where stable bodies of surface liquid are known to still exist.

There is one big difference, though: On Earth such rivers, lakes and seas are filled with water, while on Titan it is primarily methane and ethane that flows through these liquid reservoirs. In this unique cycle, the hydrocarbon molecules evaporate, condense into clouds and rain back onto the ground.

The weather on Titan varies from season to season as well, just as it does on Earth. In particular, around the equinox -- the time when the Sun crosses Titan's equator -- massive clouds can form in tropical regions and cause powerful methane storms. Cassini observed such storms during several of its Titan flybys.

When Rodriguez and his team first spotted three unusual equatorial brightenings in infrared images taken by Cassini around the moon's 2009 northern equinox, they thought they might be the same kind of methane clouds; however, an investigation revealed they were something completely different.

"From what we know about cloud formation on Titan, we can say that such methane clouds in this area and in this time of the year are not physically possible," said Rodriguez. "The convective methane clouds that can develop in this area and during this period of time would contain huge droplets and must be at a very high altitude -- much higher than the 6 miles (10 kilometers) that modeling tells us the new features are located."

The researchers were also able to rule out that the features were actually on the surface of Titan in the form of frozen methane rain or icy lavas. Such surface spots would have a different chemical signature and would remain visible for much longer than the bright features in this study, which were visible for only 11 hours to five weeks.

In addition, modeling showed that the features must be atmospheric but still close to the surface -- most likely forming a very thin layer of tiny solid organic particles. Since they were located right over the dune fields around Titan's equator, the only remaining explanation was that the spots were actually clouds of dust raised from the dunes.

Organic dust is formed when organic molecules, formed from the interaction of sunlight with methane, grow large enough to fall to the surface. Rodriguez said that while this is the first-ever observation of a dust storm on Titan, the finding is not surprising.

"We believe that the Huygens Probe, which landed on the surface of Titan in January 2005, raised a small amount of organic dust upon arrival due to its powerful aerodynamic wake," said Rodriguez. "But what we spotted here with Cassini is at a much larger scale. The near-surface wind speeds required to raise such an amount of dust as we see in these dust storms would have to be very strong -- about five times as strong as the average wind speeds estimated by the Huygens measurements near the surface and with climate models."

The existence of such strong winds generating massive dust storms implies that the underlying sand can be set in motion, too, and that the giant dunes covering Titan's equatorial regions are still active and continually changing.

The winds could be transporting the dust raised from the dunes across large distances, contributing to the global cycle of organic dust on Titan and causing similar effects to those that can be observed on Earth and Mars.

The results were obtained with Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini spacecraft deliberately plunged into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the U.S. and several European countries.

For more information about Cassini, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/cassini

https://saturn.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

Markus Bauer

ESA Science Communication Officer

Tel: +31 71 565 6799

Mob: +31 61 594 3 954

markus.bauer@esa.int

2018-222

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NASA Seeking Partner in Contest to Name Next Mars Rover

NASA has a class assignment for corporations, nonprofits and educational organizations involved in science and space exploration: partner with the agency to inspire future engineers and scientists by sponsoring a contest to name the next rover to venture to the Red Planet.

The contest will allow U.S. students in grades K-12 to propose a name for NASA's next Mars rover (currently being built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California) and write an essay about their choice. The partner will work with NASA to conduct the contest during the 2019 academic year.

The announcement for proposals can be found here. All proposals must be received by Oct. 9, 2018, to be considered. Questions by corporations, nonprofits and educational organizations interested in participating should be sent by email to: hqmars2020namingproposals@mail.nasa.gov.

"We've been doing naming contests since the very first Mars rover back in 1997," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, in Washington. "Thousands of kids participate, and their enthusiasm for the contest and Mars is infectious."

The selected partner will have an opportunity to be part of an historic mission, helping NASA enage students from across the country by letting them participate in the next mission to Mars. As part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet, the Mars 2020 rover mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars, including key questions about the potential for life on the Red Planet.

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 on Mars 2020, go to:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

For more information about NASA's Mars missions, go to:

https://mars.nasa.gov

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

2018-221

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Houston Medical Students to Speak Live with NASA Astronaut on Space Station

Medical students from The University of Texas Health Sciences Center (UTHealth) in Houston will speak with an astronaut aboard the International Space Station next week.

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New Small Satellite Peers Inside Hurricane Florence

A new experimental weather satellite no bigger than a cereal box got an inside look at Hurricane Florence in a test of technology that could influence the future of storm monitoring from space. The satellite took its first images of Hurricane Florence on Tuesday, Sept. 11, just hours after its instrument was turned on.

TEMPEST-D, which deployed into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station in July, carries a state-of-the-art miniaturized microwave radiometer, an instrument that sees through the thick clouds to reveal the hidden interior of storms, just like a security scanner can see inside luggage at the airport.

The brightly colored image on the right was taken by TEMPEST-D (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems Demonstration) as it flew over Hurricane Florence on Sept. 11, 2018. The colors reveal the eye of the storm, surrounded by towering, intense rain bands. The green areas highlight the extent of the rain being produced by the storm, with the most intense rain shown in the yellow and red areas. The image on the left is a visual image of the storm's clouds, taken by NOAA's GOES (Geoweather Operational Environmental Satellite). Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/Naval Research Laboratory Monterey/JPL-Caltech

The image taken by TEMPEST-D (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems Demonstration) captures Florence over the Atlantic Ocean, revealing the eye of the storm surrounded by towering, intense rain bands. The green areas highlight the extent of the rain being produced by the storm, with the most intense rain shown in yellow and red. The TEMPEST-D data is contrasted with a visible image of Florence that shows the familiar cyclone-shaped clouds of the storm but doesn't reveal what's inside.

TEMPEST-D's mission is to test new, low-cost technology that could be used in the future to gather more weather data and help researchers better understand storms. The level of detail in the small-satellite image is similar to what existing weather satellites produce.

"We were challenged to fit this instrument into such a small satellite without compromising data quality and were delighted to see it work right out of the box," said Sharmila Padmanabhan, who led the instrument development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Shrinking weather satellites could one day help scientists provide more frequent updates on developing storms.

"TEMPEST-D paves the way for future missions where we can afford to fly many of these miniaturized weather satellites in constellations. Such a deployment would enable us to watch storms as they grow," said Steven Reising, the principal investigator for TEMPEST-D at Colorado State University.

TEMPEST-D is a technology-demonstration mission led by Colorado State University and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in partnership with Blue Canyon Technologies and Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia. The mission is sponsored by NASA's Earth Ventures program and managed by the Earth Science Technology Office. The radiometer instrument was built by JPL and employs high-frequency microwave amplifier technology developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation.

More information about TEMPEST-D is available at:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cubesat/missions/tempest-d.php

News Media Contact

Arielle Samuelson / Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307 / 818-354-4269

arielle.a.samuelson@jpl.nasa.gov / esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-220

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NASA Updates Live Coverage of Japanese Cargo Launch, Delays Spacewalks

Delayed due to inclement weather, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) now is targeting 1:52 p.m. EDT Saturday, Sept. 22 (2:52 a.m. Sept. 23 in Japan), for the launch of its unpiloted H-II Transfer Vehicle-7 (HTV-7) cargo spacecraft.

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Scientists ID Three Causes of Earth's Spin Axis Drift

A typical desk globe is designed to be a geometric sphere and to rotate smoothly when you spin it. Our actual planet is far less perfect -- in both shape and in rotation.

Earth is not a perfect sphere. When it rotates on its spin axis -- an imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles -- it drifts and wobbles. These spin-axis movements are scientifically referred to as "polar motion." Measurements for the 20^th century show that the spin axis drifted about 4 inches (10 centimeters) per year. Over the course of a century, that becomes more than 11 yards (10 meters).

Using observational and model-based data spanning the entire 20^th century, NASA scientists have for the first time identified three broadly-categorized processes responsible for this drift -- contemporary mass loss primarily in Greenland, glacial rebound, and mantle convection.

"The traditional explanation is that one process, glacial rebound, is responsible for this motion of Earth's spin axis. But recently, many researchers have speculated that other processes could have potentially large effects on it as well," said first author Surendra Adhikari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We assembled models for a suite of processes that are thought to be important for driving the motion of the spin axis. We identified not one but three sets of processes that are crucial -- and melting of the global cryosphere (especially Greenland) over the course of the 20^th century is one of them."

In general, the redistribution of mass on and within Earth -- like changes to land, ice sheets, oceans and mantle flow -- affects the planet's rotation. As temperatures increased throughout the 20^th century, Greenland's ice mass decreased. In fact, a total of about 7,500 gigatons -- the weight of more than 20 million Empire State Buildings -- of Greenland's ice melted into the ocean during this time period. This makes Greenland one of the top contributors of mass being transferred to the oceans, causing sea level to rise and, consequently, a drift in Earth's spin axis.

While ice melt is occurring in other places (like Antarctica), Greenland's location makes it a more significant contributor to polar motion.

"There is a geometrical effect that if you have a mass that is 45 degrees from the North Pole -- which Greenland is -- or from the South Pole (like Patagonian glaciers), it will have a bigger impact on shifting Earth's spin axis than a mass that is right near the Pole," said coauthor Eric Ivins, also of JPL.

Previous studies identified glacial rebound as the key contributor to long-term polar motion. And what is glacial rebound? During the last ice age, heavy glaciers depressed Earth's surface much like a mattress depresses when you sit on it. As that ice melts, or is removed, the land slowly rises back to its original position. In the new study, which relied heavily on a statistical analysis of such rebound, scientists figured out that glacial rebound is likely to be responsible for only about a third of the polar drift in the 20^th century.

The authors argue that mantle convection makes up the final third. Mantle convection is responsible for the movement of tectonic plates on Earth's surface. It is basically the circulation of material in the mantle caused by heat from Earth's core. Ivins describes it as similar to a pot of soup placed on the stove. As the pot, or mantle, heats, the pieces of the soup begin to rise and fall, essentially forming a vertical circulation pattern -- just like the rocks moving through Earth's mantle.

With these three broad contributors identified, scientists can distinguish mass changes and polar motion caused by long-term Earth processes over which we have little control from those caused by climate change. They now know that if Greenland's ice loss accelerates, polar motion likely will, too. The paper was recently published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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NASA Updates Preview Briefing for International Space Station Spacewalks, Live Coverage

Experts from NASA will preview two upcoming spacewalks outside the International Space Station to continue upgrades to the orbiting laboratory’s power system in a briefing at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 27, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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New Study Tracks Hurricane Harvey Stormwater with GPS

Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water on southeast Texas in late August 2017, making it the wettest recorded hurricane in U.S. history. But after the storm passed, where did all that water go?

In a new, NASA-led study, scientists used Global Positioning System (GPS) data to answer that question and to track not just where Harvey's stormwater ended up on land, but also how long it took to dissipate.

"We determined that in the first eight days post-landfall, 30 percent of Harvey's stormwater was captured or stored on land -- most as standing water that sits on the surface. Around 60 percent was lost or drained into the ocean and Galveston Bay over the first few days after the storm, and the remaining 10 percent was lost via evapotranspiration, or a combination of evaporation and plant transpiration," said first author Chris Milliner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The 30 percent of water that was stored on land then gradually dissipated over a period of about five weeks, likely through evapotranspiration, groundwater runoff into nearby rivers and the replenishment of aquifers.

How It Works

Made up of satellites, receivers and ground stations located around the world, GPS allows scientists to measure changes in Earth's surface elevation to an accuracy of less than an inch (a few millimeters). It works much like GPS on your mobile phone but with greater accuracy. The study team used daily elevation measurements from about 220 of these ground stations, from western Texas to Louisiana, to track changes in the amount of stormwater on land after the hurricane.

"When you sit on a mattress, your weight depresses its surface. Earth's crust is also elastic and behaves in a similar way under the weight of water," said Milliner. "GPS is measuring the amount of subsidence (or depression), which tells you how much water mass must be pressing on the surface and where that water is distributed."

The team determined that in the first several days after Hurricane Harvey, the land around Houston lowered in elevation by as much as 20 millimeters. The GPS data also tracked a clear pattern of land subsidence that migrated across the Gulf Coast over a seven-day period, consistent with the position of Hurricane Harvey. Following this initial land subsidence, measurements from GPS stations found that Earth's surface gradually rose back up, indicating water was draining and evaporating from land -- just as a mattress behaves when you slowly stand up and remove your weight from it.

To detect Earth's mattress-like response to changes in water mass, the team first had to process the GPS data to remove systematic errors called common mode error (CME). CME acts essentially as "noise" that masks the hydrologic signal. Using an independent component-analysis filter, the team was able to statistically separate the raw GPS data into CME and hydrologic signals. This allowed them to discard the signal that was noise and extract the subtle hydrologic signal they sought.

With the filtered GPS data, scientists were able to determine the daily magnitude and location of the surface depression and from this calculate the daily mass of water that caused it.

Why It Matters

The study demonstrates -- for the first time -- that it is possible to robustly quantify daily changes in water storage following extreme precipitation events like major hurricanes. It allows us to see how much water is temporarily stored on land after a major hurricane, where it is stored, and how long it takes for stored water to dissipate over time.

Scientists wanting to understand how the hydrologic system behaves in response to large storms benefit from this information, but so do water and flood managers. If they know how much water was stored on land and how long it took for the water to dissipate after a major precipitation event, they have a clearer understanding of what to expect when the next major, rain-intensive storm hits -- and can prepare accordingly.

The study, titled "Tracking the Weight of Hurricane Harvey's Stormwater Using GPS Data," was recently published by the journal Science Advances.

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ECOSTRESS Maps LA's Hot Spots

NASA's ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) captured new imagery of variations in surface-temperature patterns in Los Angeles County. The first of its kind to be taken by the agency's newest Earth-observing mission, it is more detailed than previous imagery and, unlike prior imagery, was acquired at different times of the day.

ECOSTRESS measures surface temperature -- the temperature you would feel if you touched the surface of something -- rather than the air temperature typically reported by weather stations. The images were acquired throughout the day between July 22 and Aug. 14 during an extended period of high temperatures in the Los Angeles area.

Cooler temperatures appear in blue, and warmer temperatures are shown in red. In the image taken July 22 at 4:07 a.m., the hottest (reddest) areas are dark asphalt surfaces that are unshaded during the day and remain warm throughout the night. They include freeways, airports, oil refineries and parking lots. The cool (blue) areas are clouds and higher-elevation mountainous regions (dark blue).

The other images show how different urban surfaces warm up and cool down throughout the day. The daytime image (upper left) acquired at 3:01 p.m. PDT on July 31 shows how hot the inland regions can get during a period of extreme heat. The Santa Anita racetrack parking lot was the hottest area. At 147.3° F, the surface temperature there was hot enough to fry an egg.

ECOSTRESS imagery shows surface temperature variations in Los Angeles, California between July 22 and August 14 at different times of day. Hot areas are shown in red, warm areas in orange and yellow, and cooler areas in blue. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Full image and caption

Images in the upper right, lower left and lower right -- acquired at 9:26 p.m., 11:43 p.m. and 4:07 a.m., respectively -- show how urban surfaces cool down, with roof surfaces cooling at a much faster rate than roads and other asphalt surfaces that have a higher heat capacity. Note that in the lower-right image, reds correspond with temperatures in the 80s. The top image from the same time shows a slightly different scale to enhance the contrast between different surfaces -- and reds correspond with temperatures in the 70s.

The Los Angeles area is known for its Mediterranean climate and abundant sunshine but also for its extreme "micro-climate" temperature swings -- from cooler coastal areas to much warmer inland regions like the San Gabriel Valley. ECOSTRESS can detect the distribution and pattern variations of that surface heat over areas the size of a football field.

ECOSTRESS launched on June 29 as part of a SpaceX commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. The primary mission of ECOSTRESS is to detect plant health by monitoring Earth's surface temperature. However, surface temperature data are also useful in detecting other heat-related phenomena, such as heat waves, volcanoes and fires.

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, including these data, visit:

https://ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information on Earth science activities aboard the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/issearthscience

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NASA Hosts Science Chat on Upcoming Historic Planetary Encounter

Members of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft team will host a Science Chat at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 19, on humanity’s farthest planetary flyby, scheduled to occur Jan. 1 when the spacecraft encounters a mysterious object in the Kuiper Belt nicknamed “Ultima Thule.”

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NASA Names Holly Ridings New Chief Flight Director

NASA has named Holly Ridings its new chief flight director, making her the first woman to lead the elite group that directs human spaceflight missions from the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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NASA, ULA Launch Mission to Track Earth's Changing Ice

NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) successfully launched from California at 9:02 a.m. EDT Saturday, embarking on its mission to measure the ice of Earth’s frozen reaches with unprecedented accuracy.

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NASA Awards Fellowships to 12 Graduate Students

NASA Fellowship Activity has awarded fellowships through NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) and Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) to 12 graduate students totaling $1.9 million to conduct research and contribute directly to NASA’s work and mission.

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Georgia, Washington Students to Speak with Astronauts Aboard Space Station

Students in Georgia and Washington, D.C., will talk live with two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station next week as part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.

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GRACE-FO Satellite Switching to Backup Instrument Processing Unit

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission team plans to switch to a backup system in the Microwave Instrument (MWI) on one of the twin spacecraft this month. Following the switch-over, GRACE-FO is expected to quickly resume science data collection.

A month after launching this past May, GRACE-FO produced its first preliminary gravity field map. The mission has not acquired science data since mid-July due to an anomaly with a component of the Microwave Instrument on one of the GRACE-FO spacecraft. The mission team is completing its investigation into the cause of the anomaly.

The primary science objective of GRACE-FO -- like its predecessor GRACE, which operated from 2002 to 2017 -- is to track how water is redistributed on Earth, by producing highly accurate, monthly gravity field maps. Measurements of changes in Earth's gravity field provide measurements of mass change and enable unique insights into Earth's changing climate, Earth system processes like droughts and sea level changes, and the impacts of human activities on water resources.

The two GRACE-FO spacecraft were launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 22. The mission's launch and early operations phases were completed within five days, and the science instruments were activated a few days later. Analysis of the initial data indicated that both the Microwave Instrument and the Laser Ranging Interferometer were producing highly precise measurements of the gravity-induced change in distance between the two GRACE-FO satellites -- as good as or better than the original GRACE mission.

On July 19, the primary MWI Instrument Processing Unit (IPU) on the GRACE-FO 2 satellite powered down in response to autonomous commands from an instrument fault monitor indicating that the IPU was using less current than expected. The IPU provides various timing references for the satellite as well as onboard digital signal-processing functions for the Microwave Instrument and GPS signals. Each of the two GRACE-FO satellites is equipped with a pair of IPUs -- a primary unit and a redundant one -- to provide backup in case one unit malfunctions.

Following several unsuccessful attempts to reactivate the IPU, mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, established an anomaly response team on Aug. 6 to investigate the issue. The team is working with the engineers who developed the Microwave Instrument, attempting to reproduce the abnormal behavior in the laboratory to understand the cause of the problem.

Following completion of the remaining instrument calibrations, the performance and stability of the redundant IPU will be monitored for at least 30 days. Once the instrument's stable operation has been confirmed, the mission will be on track to enter its science operations phase, beginning with a four-month data-validation period as previously planned.

GRACE-FO is a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ). Both spacecraft are being operated from the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, under a GFZ contract with the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)). JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about GRACE-FO, see:

https://www.nasa.gov/gracefo

https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/

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NASA Instrument Sees Hurricane Florence in 3D

NASA has many Earth-observing instruments keeping tabs on Hurricane Florence --including its Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). MISR passed over the hurricane Thurs., Sept. 13, as it approached the eastern coast of the U.S. and captured the storm in 3D.

MISR carries nine cameras that observe Earth at different angles, and it takes about seven minutes for all the cameras to observe the same location. The 3D stereo anaglyph combines two of MISR's camera angles. You will need red-blue 3D glasses, with the red lens placed over the left eye, to view the effect. The anaglyph shows high clouds associated with strong thunderstorms in the eyewall of the storm and individual thunderstorms in the outer rain bands. These smaller storms can spawn tornadoes.

At the time the imagery was acquired, Florence was a large Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (169 kph). The center of the storm was about 145 miles (230 kilometers) southeast of Wilmington, North Carolina. Coastal areas had already begun to experience tropical-storm-force winds, and millions of people across multiple states were under evacuation orders.

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The instrument flies aboard the Terra satellite, which is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The MISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center in Hampton, Virginia. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

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MarCO Makes Space for Small Explorers

Twenty years ago, CubeSats -- a class of boxy satellites small enough to fit in a backpack -- were used by universities as a teaching aid. Simpler, smaller and cheaper than traditional satellites, they've made space more accessible to private companies and science agencies.

This summer, NASA has been flying the first two next-generation CubeSats to deep space. They're currently on their way to Mars, trailing thousands of miles behind the InSight spacecraft. InSight and its CubeSat tag-alongs are already more than halfway to the Red Planet.

The mini-mission, called Mars Cube One (MarCO), has already proved this class of spacecraft can survive the deep-space environment. It will next test the use of miniaturized communication technology to relay data when InSight attempts to land in November. Relaying landing data is one of the jobs of NASA's orbiters, which will record InSight's descent; engineers learn more from every landing attempt. MarCO will test whether this technology can ably perform the relay job for future missions.

To complete their mission, the MarCOs have miniature high-gain antennas and radios that can communicate with Earth from roughly 93 million miles away. Their propulsion systems are capable of steering towards Mars; each MarCO completed its second steering maneuver in August. They even have color cameras, one of which snapped the first image of Earth and the Moon -- proof of just how far this technology has literally come.

MarCO is still experimental. It's meant to demonstrate that spacecraft technology can be shrunk into a tiny package and still do something useful in deep space. And while CubeSats will never compete with the larger and more complex spacecraft NASA usually flies, the MarCO spacecraft are pioneering a new class of robotic exploration.

"Our hope is that MarCO could help democratize deep space," said Jakob Van Zyl, director of the Solar System Exploration Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "The technology is cheap enough that you could envision countries entering space that weren't players in the past. Even universities could do this."

A Legacy of Pathfinders

JPL initiated and built MarCO, just one of several CubeSat projects the Lab has developed. JPL is a natural place to host CubeSats: The Lab built the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, which discovered the Van Allen radiation belts in 1958. Not unlike a CubeSat, it was a small, rudimentary spacecraft. The history of the U.S. space program followed in its wake.

JPL later built a Mars mini-rover called Sojourner that took baby steps in 1997 and proved to be a trial run for NASA's Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.

Innovation often begins with pathfinder technology, Van Zyl said. Once engineers prove something can be done, science missions follow.

"When it comes to innovation, MarCO is in the same class as Explorer 1 and Sojourner," Van Zyl said. "The question is: Can we use CubeSats to do more science? Not all science, because they're too limited to carry many instruments. But this technology creates a vehicle for people to do science at a much lower investment to the taxpayer."

NASA has already committed to answering the question. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency's Science Mission Directorate, is a proponent of CubeSats; last month, he announced NASA will be funding $100 million worth of SmallSat science missions each year.

Preparing for Future CubeSats

MarCO has already laid the groundwork for future exploration with small spacecraft.

"Almost all the features of MarCO are being adapted for use on future spacecraft," said John Baker, the program manager responsible for small spacecraft at JPL. "And many parts started with a commercial partner's product that was modified."

The role of MarCO's commercial partners can't be understated. Its solar panels, cameras, avionics, propulsion systems and attitude control systems were all provided by commercial contractors. One advantage of CubeSats is they can use standardized parts and systems, allowing private companies to lower the price of new technology. Lower-cost spacecraft also mean engineers can take more design risks, testing that technology in space.

Van Zyl said that MarCO's main goal was to prove CubeSats can survive the harsh journey to another planet. MarCO's team can check that box off their list.

They're already focused on their next goal: Mars is just a few months and 68 million miles (110 million kilometers) away.

For more information about MarCO, visit:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cubesat/missions/marco.php

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

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NASA Awards Contract for Space Geodesy Satellite Laser Ranging Stations

NASA has awarded a contract to KBRwyle Technology Solutions, LLC in Columbia, Maryland, for the construction, deployment and commissioning of the agency’s next-generation Space Geodesy Satellite Laser Ranging (SGSLR) stations.

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Jody Singer Named Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has named Jody Singer director of the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

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Cassini's Final View of Titan's Northern Lakes and Seas

During NASA's Cassini mission's final distant encounter with Saturn's giant moon Titan, the spacecraft captured the enigmatic moon's north polar landscape of lakes and seas, which are filled with liquid methane and ethane.

They were captured on Sept. 11, 2017. Four days later, Cassini was deliberately plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn.

Punga Mare (240 miles, or 390 kilometers, across) is seen just above the center of the mosaic, with Ligeia Mare (300 miles, or 500 kilometers, wide) below center and the vast Kraken Mare stretching off 730 miles (1,200 kilometers) to the left of the mosaic. Titan's numerous smaller lakes can be seen around the seas and scattered around the right side of the mosaic. Among the ongoing mysteries about Titan is how these lakes are formed.

Another mystery at Titan has been the weather. With its dense atmosphere, Titan has a methane cycle much like Earth's water cycle of evaporation, cloud formation, rainfall, surface runoff into rivers, and collection in lakes and seas. During Titan's southern summer, Cassini observed cloud activity over the south pole (see PIA 06112 and PIA06109).

However, typical of observations taken during northern spring and summer, the view here reveals only a few small clouds. They appear as bright features just below the center of the mosaic, including a few above Ligeia Mare.

"We expected more symmetry between the southern and northern summer," said Elizabeth ("Zibi") Turtle of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) team that captured the image. "In fact, atmospheric models predicted summer clouds over the northern latitudes several years ago. So, the fact that they still hadn't appeared before the end of the mission is telling us something interesting about Titan's methane cycle and weather."

"Titan is a fascinating place that really teases us with some of its mysteries," said Turtle.

The images in this mosaic were taken with the ISS narrow-angle camera, using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) from Titan. Image scale is about 0.5 miles (800 meters) per pixel. The image is an orthographic projection centered on 67.19 degrees north latitude, 212.67 degrees west longitude. An orthographic view is most like the view seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the U.S., England, France and Germany. The imaging operations center and team leader are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission, visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

For more information about the Cassini mission, visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

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Gretchen McCartney

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

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Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

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Hurricane Florence as Viewed by NASA's AIRS Instrument

All eyes were on Hurricane Florence Wednesday as the Category 3 storm barreled toward the U.S. East Coast. NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument was watching, too, and captured new imagery of the storm's approach.

AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at weather and climate. It acquired infrared and visible light images at 1:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday. In the infrared image, a symmetrical ring of deep, cold rain clouds is shown in purple. Warmer areas, including a well-defined eye, are shown in blue. Shallower rain clouds are shown in green, while the red areas represent mostly cloud-free air moving away from the storm. The visible light image shows Florence much as our eyes would see it. It showcases the storm's thick cloud shield with clouds that extend far from the eye of the storm.

Hurricane Florence underwent rapid intensification from a Category 2 storm to a Category 4 storm earlier this week. Although it was downgraded to Category 3 on Wednesday, the storm remains large and powerful with the potential for devastating winds, rain and storm surges. States of emergency have already been declared in several states along the coast.

Launched into orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the Caltech in Pasadena.

More information about AIRS can be found at https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov.

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NASA, Roscosmos Statement on International Space Station Leak

The following is a joint statement from NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos about the investigation into a pressure leak on the International Space Station Aug. 29-30:

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NASA to Preview Two International Space Station Spacewalks, Provide Live Coverage

Astronauts on the International Space Station will conduct spacewalks Sept. 23 and 29 to continue upgrades to the orbiting laboratory’s power system. Experts from NASA will preview this work in a briefing at 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 18, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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And the Emmy goes to: Cassini's Grand Finale

JPL has won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program for its coverage of the Cassini mission's Grand Finale at Saturn. The award was presented Saturday, Sept. 8, at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Accepting the award were members of the JPL Media Relations and Public Engagement offices, and leaders of the Cassini Mission.

"This award represents the special magic that happens when we combine the stunning imagery and powerful science from a mission such as Cassini with the extraordinary talents of an innovative media and communications team. By honoring our interactive program on the Cassini Grand Finale, the Television Academy honored the great cause of space exploration, and I am tremendously proud of our Public Engagement and Media Relations teams for turning the end of a mission into a new beginning for communicating the wonders of our universe," said Michael Greene, the Lab's director for Communications and Education.

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 needed to meet its end in the skies of Saturn.

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 Cassini team is tremendously grateful that our mission's amazing story was told in such a creative way by the communications team at JPL, and that the TV Academy has chosen to honor that story. Receiving an Emmy is one more amazing first for Cassini," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize.

The multifaceted interactive 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.

"To an incredible spacecraft that could and did. To an amazing mission that guided her. To our public that followed her for 20 years before she plunged into Saturn but sent science to the end. Go NASA!" said Alice Wessen, manager at JPL's Public Engagement Office.

"Thank you to space fans, if you're a current space fan or future space fan. We can't fit you all into mission control but we can give you a virtual seat and we can put you at Saturn and we can put you at Mars," said Veronica McGregor, manager of JPL's Media Relations Office. "Thanks also to NASA and JPL for having a culture that tells us to shoot for the stars in all of our positions, whether we are explorers or storytellers. This is for science, for science literacy, and discovery."

The Creative Arts Emmys honor outstanding artistic and technical achievement in multiple categories including animation, casting, cinematography, costumes, visual effects, title design, interactive programs and more. Awards in over 50 categories were announced on Saturday. The prestigious Governor's Award was presented to the "Star Trek" franchise, with William Shatner and 100 cast and crew members from multiple "Star Trek" series appearing on stage. An edited version of the show will air on Sept. 15 on the FXX channel.

The Primetime Emmys will be awarded by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles on Sept. 17. A full list of winners is available here.

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

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

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NASA to Broadcast Final Parachute Test for Orion Spacecraft

NASA will air the final test Wednesday, Sept. 12, of the parachute system for its Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond.

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NASA Astronaut Nick Hague Available for Interviews Before First Spaceflight

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will be available at 7 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 19, for live satellite interviews from Russia before he launches to the International Space Station on his first spaceflight in October.

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Legacy of NASA's Dawn, Near the End of its Mission

NASA's Dawn mission is drawing to a close after 11 years of breaking new ground in planetary science, gathering breathtaking imagery, and performing unprecedented feats of spacecraft engineering.

Dawn's mission was extended several times, outperforming scientists' expectations in its exploration of two planet-like bodies, Ceres and Vesta, that make up 45 percent of the mass of the main asteroid belt. Now the spacecraft is about to run out of a key fuel, hydrazine. When that happens, most likely between mid-September and mid-October, Dawn will lose its ability to communicate with Earth. It will remain in a silent orbit around Ceres for decades.

"Although it will be sad to see Dawn's departure from our mission family, we are intensely proud of its many accomplishments," said Lori Glaze, actingdirector of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Not only did this spacecraft unlock scientific secrets at these two small but significant worlds, it was also the first spacecraft to visit and orbit bodies at two extraterrestrial destinations during its mission. Dawn's science and engineering achievements will echo throughout history."

NASA's Dawn spacecraft turned science fiction into science fact by using ion propulsion to explore the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. The mission will end this fall, when the spacecraft runs out of hydrazine, which keeps it oriented and in communication with Earth.

When Dawn launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in September 2007, strapped on a Delta II-Heavy rocket, scientists and engineers had an idea of what Ceres and Vesta looked like. Thanks to ground- and space-based telescopes, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter were visible -- but even the best pictures were fuzzy.

From 2011 to 2012, Dawn swept over Vesta, capturing images that exceeded everyone's imaginings -- craters, canyons and even mountains. Then on Ceres in 2015, Dawn showed us a cryovolcano and mysterious bright spots, which scientists later found might be salt deposits produced by the exposure of briny liquid from Ceres' interior. Through Dawn's eyes, these bright spots were especially stunning, glowing like diamonds scattered across the dwarf planet's surface.

"Dawn's legacy is that it explored two of the last uncharted worlds in the inner Solar System," said Marc Rayman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California, who serves as Dawn's mission director and chief engineer. "Dawn has shown us alien worlds that for two centuries were just pinpoints of light amidst the stars. And it has produced these richly detailed, intimate portraits and revealed exotic, mysterious landscapes unlike anything we've ever seen."

Engineering Feats

Dawn is the only spacecraft to orbit a body in the asteroid belt. And it is the only spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial destinations. These feats were possible thanks to ion propulsion, a tremendously efficient propulsion system familiar to science-fiction fans and space enthusiasts. Dawn pushed the limits of the system's capabilities and stamina, showing how useful it is for other missions that aim to visit multiple destinations.

Pushed by ion propulsion, Dawn reached Vesta in 2011 and investigated it from surface to core during 14 months in orbit. In 2012, engineers maneuvered Dawn out of orbit and steered it though the asteroid belt for more than two years before inserting it into orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, where it has been collecting data since 2015.

Window into the Past

All the while, scientists gained new insight into the early stages of our Solar System, fulfilling Dawn's objective. The mission was named for its purpose: to learn more about the dawn of the Solar System. It targeted Ceres and Vesta because they function as time capsules, intact survivors of the earliest part of our history. And the duo delivered, giving scientists insight into the original building blocks of the Solar System.

"Vesta and Ceres have each told their story of how and where they formed, and how they evolved -- a fiery magmatic history that led to rocky Vesta and a cooler, water-rich history that resulted in the ancient ocean world Ceres," said Carol Raymond of JPL, principal investigator of the Dawn mission. "These treasure troves of information will continue to help us understand other bodies in the Solar System far into the future."

Spectacular Ceres

There was so much that scientists didn't know about Ceres before Dawn arrived. Raymond wondered whether they might find Ceres covered with a smooth, young surface -- an enormous cue ball with a frozen crust. Instead, they found the dwarf planet wearing the chemistry of its old ocean. "What we found was completely mind-blowing. Ceres' history is just splayed all over its surface," she said.

Some of the dazzling bright spots turned out to be brilliant salty deposits, composed mainly of sodium carbonate that made its way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust.

The findings reinforce the idea that dwarf planets, not just icy moons like Enceladus and Europa, could have hosted oceans during their history -- and potentially still do. Analyses from Dawn data suggest there may still be liquid under Ceres' surface and that some regions were geologically active relatively recently, feeding from a deep reservoir.

One of Dawn's biggest reveals on Ceres lay in the region of Ernutet Crater. Organic molecules were found in abundance. Organics are among the building blocks of life, though Dawn's data can't determine if Ceres' organics were formed by biological processes.

"There is growing evidence that the organics in Ernutet came from Ceres' interior, in which case they could have existed for some time in the early interior ocean," said Julie Castillo-Rogez, Dawn's project scientist and deputy principal investigator at JPL.

Vibrant Vesta

At Vesta, Dawn's investigation into the early Solar System found a 4.5-billion-year-old witness it could interrogate. Dawn mapped the craters of the planet-like world and revealed that its northern hemisphere had experienced more large impacts than expected, suggesting there were more large objects in the asteroid belt early on than scientists thought.

Vesta held other surprises as well. While it's technically classified as an asteroid, that label belies the rich and varied terrain Dawn revealed, and the planet-like processes that Vesta experienced. Hubble had relayed images of a mountain at the center of an enormous basin now called Rheasilvia. Dawn's mapping showed it to be twice the height of Mt. Everest, and it revealed canyons that rival the Grand Canyon in size. Dawn also confirmed Vesta as the source of a very common family of meteorites.

Now, near the end of Dawn's second extended mission at Ceres, the spacecraft has continued to gather high-resolution images, gamma ray and neutron spectra, infrared spectra, and gravity data. Almost once a day, it will swoop over Ceres about 22 miles (35 kilometers) from its surface -- only about three times the altitude of a passenger jet -- gathering valuable data until it expends the last of the hydrazine that feeds thrusters controlling its orientation. Dawn's reaction wheels failed earlier in the mission, leaving it heavily dependent on this key fuel. When Dawn runs out in the next month or two, the spacecraft will lose its ability to communicate with Earth, but it must not crash into Ceres.

Because Ceres has conditions of interest to scientists who study chemistry that leads to the development of life, NASA follows strict planetary protection protocols for the disposal of the Dawn spacecraft. Unlike Cassini, which deliberately plunged into Saturn's atmosphere to protect the system from contamination -- Dawn will remain in orbit around Ceres, which has no atmosphere.

Engineers designed Dawn's final orbit to ensure it will not crash for at least 20 years -- and likely decades longer.

Rayman, who led the team that flew Dawn throughout the mission and into its final orbit, likes to think of Dawn's end this way: as "an inert, celestial monument to human creativity and ingenuity."

More on Dawn's mission legacy here: https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/toolkit/

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NAPrSA'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. Northrop Grumman 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

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Colorado Students to Speak with Astronauts on International Space Station

High school students in Fort Collins, Colorado, will talk live with a NASA astronaut currently living and working aboard the International Space Station Wednesday, Sept. 12, as part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.

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Curiosity Surveys a Mystery Under Dusty Skies

After snagging a new rock sample on Aug. 9, NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on Mars, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Vera Rubin Ridge.

The panorama includes umber skies, darkened by a fading global dust storm. It also includes a rare view by the Mast Camera of the rover itself, revealing a thin layer of dust on Curiosity's deck. In the foreground is the rover's most recent drill target, named "Stoer" after a town in Scotland near where important discoveries about early life on Earth were made in lakebed sediments.

The new drill sample delighted Curiosity's science team, because the rover's last two drill attempts were thwarted by unexpectedly hard rocks. Curiosity started using a new drill method earlier this year to work around a mechanical problem. Testing has shown it to be as effective at drilling rocks as the old method, suggesting the hard rocks would have posed a problem no matter which method was used.

There's no way for Curiosity to determine exactly how hard a rock will be before drilling it, so for this most recent drilling activity, the rover team made an educated guess. An extensive ledge on the ridge was thought to include harder rock, able to stand despite wind erosion; a spot below the ledge was thought more likely to have softer, erodible rocks. That strategy seems to have panned out, but questions still abound as to why Vera Rubin Ridge exists in the first place.

The rover has never encountered a place with so much variation in color and texture, according to Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the Mars Science Laboratory mission that Curiosity is a part of.

"The ridge isn't this monolithic thing -- it has two distinct sections, each of which has a variety of colors," Vasavada said. "Some are visible to the eye and even more show up when we look in near-infrared, just beyond what our eyes can see. Some seem related to how hard the rocks are."

The best way to discover why these rocks are so hard is to drill them into a powder for the rover's two internal laboratories. Analyzing them might reveal what's acting as "cement" in the ridge, enabling it to stand despite wind erosion. Most likely, Vasavada said, groundwater flowing through the ridge in the ancient past had a role in strengthening it, perhaps acting as plumbing to distribute this wind-proofing "cement."

Much of the ridge contains hematite, a mineral that forms in water. There's such a strong hematite signal that it drew the attention of NASA orbiters like a beacon. Could some variation in hematite result in harder rocks? Is there something special in the ridge's red rocks that makes them so unyielding?

For the moment, Vera Rubin Ridge is keeping its secrets to itself.

Two more drilled samples are planned for the ridge in September. After that, Curiosity will drive to its scientific end zone: areas enriched in clay and sulfate minerals higher up Mt. Sharp. That ascent is planned for early October.

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

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Saturn's Famous Hexagon May Tower Above the Clouds

A new long-term study using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed a surprising feature emerging at Saturn's northern pole as it nears summertime: a warming, high-altitude vortex with a hexagonal shape, akin to the famous hexagon seen deeper down in Saturn's clouds.

The finding, published Sept. 3 in Nature Communications, is intriguing, because it suggests that the lower-altitude hexagon may influence what happens above, and that it could be a towering structure hundreds of miles in height.

When Cassini arrived at the Saturnian system in 2004, the southern hemisphere was enjoying summertime, while the northern was in the midst of winter. The spacecraft spied a broad, warm high-altitude vortex at Saturn's southern pole but none at the planet's northern pole. The new study reports the first glimpses of a northern polar vortex forming high in the atmosphere, as Saturn's northern hemisphere approached summertime. This warm vortex sits hundreds of miles above the clouds, in the stratosphere, and reveals an unexpected surprise.

"The edges of this newly-found vortex appear to be hexagonal, precisely matching a famous and bizarre hexagonal cloud pattern we see deeper down in Saturn's atmosphere," said Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester, lead author of the new study.

Saturn's cloud levels host the majority of the planet's weather, including the pre-existing north polar hexagon. This feature was discovered by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s and has been studied for decades; a long-lasting wave potentially tied to Saturn's rotation, it is a type of phenomenon also seen on Earth, as in the Polar Jet Stream.

Its properties were revealed in detail by Cassini, which observed the feature in multiple wavelengths -- from the ultraviolet to the infrared -- using instruments including its Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). However, at the start of the mission this instrument could not peer farther up into the northern stratosphere, where temperatures were too cold for reliable CIRS infrared observations, leaving these higher-altitude regions relatively unexplored for many years.

"The mystery and extent of the hexagon continue to grow, even after Cassini's 13 years in orbit around Saturn," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist. "I look forward to seeing other new discoveries that remain to be found in the Cassini data."

For more on the new study, visit the European Space Agency's story here:

http://sci.esa.int/cassini-huygens/60589-saturn-s-famous-hexagon-may-tower-above-the-clouds/

News Media Contact

Gretchen McCartney

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-6215

Gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov

Nicolas Altobelli

ESA Cassini-Huygens Project Scientist

European Space Agency

Phone: +34 91 813 1201

Email: nicolas.altobelli esa.int

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NASA to Host Live Chat on Successful Mission to Asteroid Belt

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will host a live-streamed Science Chat at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Friday, Sept. 7, during which experts will talk about the role of the agency's Dawn spacecraft in studying the beginning of our solar system, and the approaching end of its 11-year mission.

The event will air live on NASA Television, Facebook Live, Ustream, YouTube and the agency's website.

Participants include:

• Jim Green, NASA chief scientist
• Carol Raymond, Dawn principal investigator at JPL
• Marc Rayman, Dawn mission director and chief engineer at JPL

The public can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA or in the comment section of the JPL Facebook page.

NASA launched Dawn in 2007 to learn more about the beginning of the Solar System. During its mission, the spacecraft studied the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, celestial bodies believed to have formed early in the history of the Solar System.

The mission aided scientists in characterizing the early Solar System and the processes that dominated its formation. Dawn is the only spacecraft to orbit two deep-space destinations, a feat enabled by the efficiency of the spacecraft's ion propulsion system.

For more information about Dawn, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/dawn

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

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NASA Television to Air Launch, Capture of Japanese Cargo Ship to Space Station

A Japanese cargo ship loaded with more than five tons of supplies, water, spare parts and experiments is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station at 6:32 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 10 (7:32 a.m. Sept. 11 in Japan). Live coverage of the launch and capture will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

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