NASA Invites Media to 16th SpaceX Cargo Launch to Space Station

Media accreditation now is open for the targeted Dec. 4 SpaceX launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida to deliver supplies, equipment and science investigations to the International Space Station.

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NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope, Passes Planet-Hunting Torch

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations.

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NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets - more planets even than stars - NASA's Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.

"As NASA's first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm. Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars."

Kepler has opened our eyes to the diversity of planets that exist in our galaxy. The most recent analysis of Kepler's discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky, planets similar in size to Earth, and located within the habitable zone of their parent stars. That means they're located at distances from their parent stars where liquid water - a vital ingredient to life as we know it - might pool on the planet surface.

The most common size of planet Kepler found doesn't exist in our solar system - a world between the size of Earth and Neptune - and we have much to learn about these planets. Kepler also found nature often produces jam-packed planetary systems, in some cases with so many planets orbiting close to their parent stars that our own inner solar system looks sparse by comparison.

"When we started conceiving this mission 35 years ago, we didn't know of a single planet outside our solar system," said the Kepler mission's founding principal investigator, William Borucki, now retired from NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "Now that we know planets are everywhere, Kepler has set us on a new course that's full of promise for future generations to explore our galaxy."

Launched on March 6, 2009, the Kepler space telescope combined cutting-edge techniques in measuring stellar brightness with the largest digital camera outfitted for outer space observations at that time. Originally positioned to stare continuously at 150,000 stars in one star-studded patch of the sky in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler took the first survey of planets in our galaxy and became the agency's first mission to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars.

"The Kepler mission was based on a very innovative design. It was an extremely clever approach to doing this kind of science," said Leslie Livesay, director for astronomy and physics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who served as Kepler project manager during mission development. "There were definitely challenges, but Kepler had an extremely talented team of scientists and engineers who overcame them."

Four years into the mission, after the primary mission objectives had been met, mechanical failures temporarily halted observations. The mission team was able to devise a fix, switching the spacecraft's field of view roughly every three months. This enabled an extended mission for the spacecraft, dubbed K2, which lasted as long as the first mission and bumped Kepler's count of surveyed stars up to more than 500,000.

The observation of so many stars has allowed scientists to better understand stellar behaviors and properties, which is critical information in studying the planets that orbit them. New research into stars with Kepler data also is furthering other areas of astronomy, such as the history of our Milky Way galaxy and the beginning stages of exploding stars called supernovae that are used to study how fast the universe is expanding. The data from the extended mission were also made available to the public and science community immediately, allowing discoveries to be made at an incredible pace and setting a high bar for other missions. Scientists are expected to spend a decade or more in search of new discoveries in the treasure trove of data Kepler provided.

"We know the spacecraft's retirement isn't the end of Kepler's discoveries," said Jessie Dotson, Kepler's project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "I'm excited about the diverse discoveries that are yet to come from our data and how future missions will build upon Kepler's results."

Before retiring the spacecraft, scientists pushed Kepler to its full potential, successfully completing multiple observation campaigns and downloading valuable science data even after initial warnings of low fuel. The latest data, from Campaign 19, will complement the data from NASA's newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in April. TESS builds on Kepler's foundation with fresh batches of data in its search of planets orbiting some 200,000 of the brightest and nearest stars to the Earth, worlds that can later be explored for signs of life by missions such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA's Ames Research Center manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

For the Kepler press kit, which includes multimedia, timelines and top science results, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/presskit

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/kepler

News Media Contact

Felicia Chou

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-0257

felicia.chou@nasa.gov

Alison Hawkes

Ames Research Center, California's Silicon Valley

650-604-4789

alison.hawkes@nasa.gov

Calla Cofield

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-1821

calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-254

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NASA to Hold Media Call on Status of Kepler Space Telescope Today

NASA is hosting a media teleconference on the status of the Kepler space telescope today, Oct. 30, at 3 p.m. EDT.

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The 'Claw Game' on Mars: NASA InSight Plays to Win

Click here to read about Frances Arnold's Nobel Prize.

"What the heck does Mom want? Oh, Mom probably doesn't understand the time difference, she's in Dallas right now and is probably still thinking it's California time...maybe she just wants me to go check on her cats..." A litany of mundane explanations ran through James Bailey's bleary mind at 3:23 a.m. on October 3 when he was awakened from a deep sleep by three phone calls from his mother's cell number. Bailey silenced his phone for the first two, getting grumpier with each ring. Call #3 did the trick. He picked up the phone and said groggily, "What do you want?" With great excitement and maybe a tinge of impatience, his mother said, "I wish you had picked up your phone, but I just won the Nobel Prize."

Bailey bolted upright, thrilled by the news and fueled by adrenaline. "I was overjoyed for her. It's fairly difficult to verbalize how I feel," he said. He never did manage to go back to sleep that night. In a few hours, he'd be able to share the news with his colleagues when he arrived at his job at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Building 179, High Bay 1 -- the clean room where he is a flight technician working on Mars 2020.

Bailey's mother is Frances Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. Her 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors her pioneering work in creating new, improved enzymes in the laboratory using the principles of evolution. Arnold shares the prize with two other scientists.

Arnold's bio has an abundance of academic milestones and stellar awards. She was the first woman to receive the 2011 Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering. She is also the first woman and one of just a few individuals elected to all three branches of the National Academies: for Medicine, Sciences and Engineering.

Bailey traveled a different path than his mother to his job at JPL. Growing up in Pasadena, he didn't thrive in conventional schools, so he pursued vocational training in welding and machining. After high school, he worked on high-performance cars at a local shop. At 20, he joined the Army, where he was trained as a Blackhawk helicopter mechanic and became part of a flight crew. After wrapping up six years of military service, including crucial work on medical evacuation helicopter teams in Afghanistan, he learned JPL was looking for people with an aviation background to work as flight technicians. Bailey fit the bill, and he was hired.

"If you do something wrong in aviation, lives are at stake, and that same level of detail needs to be taken here, because we send spacecraft that we can't repair, so they have to be perfect the first time," Bailey said.

Eventually, Bailey hopes to continue his education in aerospace and mechanical engineering. After all, engineering and science are a family tradition. In addition to his mother's career, his biological father, James E. Bailey, was a chemistry professor at ETH Zurich, and his stepfather, Andrew Lange, was a Caltech professor of astrophysics. His mother's father was a nuclear engineer, one of her brothers worked on developing microprocessors, and her other brother is a professor who conducts cancer research at Rutgers University.

Bailey has vivid childhood memories of visiting Caltech labs with his parents, which he believes pushed him toward science and mechanics. But he added, "I really think it's genetic." And in his family, that affinity for STEM fields is shared by men and women.

Bailey met a lot of female students and professors through his parents. "When I first heard about the struggles of women and STEM, I was a little surprised, like, 'This is really a thing?' That's because I had a small, biased view of it, being surrounded by brilliant female engineers and professors."

Bailey said that since the Nobel Prize announcement, his mother has received a massive influx of bottles of Champagne, flower deliveries and phone calls, plus group emails from every corner of the family. When Arnold goes to the official Nobel ceremony in Sweden in December, she will be accompanied by her family, and she will bring her graduate students to express gratitude for all they've done and to inspire them to pursue their dreams.

"My mom would want everybody to know that it's a collaboration of everyone to achieve these big goals," Bailey said. He has seen firsthand the value of collaborations in his mother's career and in his own. "The beautiful balance of working here at JPL is that you have some of the most brilliant minds from all backgrounds, whether technical or theoretical, you have the camaraderie of the sharpest technicians and others working with some of the smartest engineers, and they find the perfect balance of making it all work," he explained.

When Bailey is not at work sporting a bunny suit in a clean room, he is mentoring his younger brother who wants to be a machinist, remodeling a house, and restoring classic cars -- a '66 Chevelle and a '71 Blazer.

"I've always got to keep a wrench in my hands, so I work on the rover during the day, and I work on my projects at night, but I need to be mechanically involved," Bailey said.

News Media Contact

DC Agle / Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-9011 / 393-2433

agle@jpl.nasa.gov / Andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Jane Platt

2018-241

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The Coincidence Between Two Overachieving NASA Missions

Two vastly different NASA spacecraft are about to run out of fuel: The Kepler spacecraft, which spent nine years in deep space collecting data that detected thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, and the Dawn spacecraft, which spent 11 years orbiting and studying the main asteroid belt's two largest objects, Vesta and Ceres.

However, the two record-setting missions have more in common than their coincidentally low fuel levels. Both missions gathered data that broke new scientific ground, searching for answers inside and outside our solar system.

Launched in 2007, Dawn was the first spacecraft to orbit a body between Mars and Jupiter, and the first to orbit more than one deep-space destination. From 2011 to 2012, Dawn studied the asteroid Vesta before pulling off an unprecedented maneuver by leaving orbit and traveling to the dwarf planet Ceres, which it observed for over 3.5 years. Dawn will remain in a stable orbit around Ceres for decades. Among its many findings, Dawn helped scientists discover organics on Ceres and evidence that dwarf planets could have hosted oceans over a significant part of their history - and possibly still do.

Kepler, meanwhile, launched in 2009 and revealed that there is statistically at least one planet around every star in our galaxy. It also opened our eyes to the variety of worlds beyond our solar system, with its discovery of more than 2,600 planets orbiting other stars. Among these worlds are rocky, Earth-sized planets, some of which orbit within their stars' habitable zones, where liquid water could pool on the surface. Kepler also characterized a class of planets that don't exist in our solar system: worlds between the sizes of Earth and Neptune, or "super-Earths."

Both missions were extended past their originally anticipated lifetime because of the innovative work of their engineers and scientists. In 2016, Dawn's mission at Ceres was extended. In 2017, its mission at Ceres was extended again to study the dwarf planet from altitudes as low as 22 miles (35 kilometers) above Ceres' surface, with the main goal of understanding the evolution of Ceres and possibly active geology.

In 2012, Kepler completed its primary mission and was awarded an extension. After the failure of a second gyroscope that kept the spacecraft steady in 2013, clever engineers found a way to use solar pressure to keep the spacecraft temporarily pointed in a desired direction. Starting in 2014, this new mission was dubbed K2. It has been running ever since, gathering science from 19 different patches of sky with populations of stars, galaxies and solar system objects.

Both missions, with their vastly distinct data sets, have given scientists here on Earth a lot to think about. From Dawn's mission, we found that Ceres may still be geologically active and could have had briny water rising and depositing salts on its surface. From Kepler's mission, we learned that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy and that many of them could be promising for life as we know it. It also showed us the diversity of planets and planetary systems out there, some of which are very different than ours.

As we prepare to say goodbye to these two record-breaking missions, we rejoice in the fact that discoveries will still arise from their data decades into the future.

News Media Contact

Gretchen McCartney

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-6215

Gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov

JoAnna Wendel / Felicia Chou

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1003/ 202-358-0257

joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov / felicia.chou@nasa.gov

2018-251

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NASA Launches a New Podcast to Mars

NASA has a new mission to Mars, and it's taking podcast listeners along for the ride.

Launching today, the eight-episode series "On a Mission" follows the InSight lander as it travels hundreds of millions of miles and attempts to land on Mars on Nov. 26. "On a Mission" will be the first JPL podcast to track a mission during flight, through interviews with the InSight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The first two episodes are available now at NASA, the InSight website, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts. Episode One lays out the odds of reaching the surface safely - fewer than half of Mars missions make it.

"When things go beautifully it looks easy, but it's really not easy," said Sue Smrekar, deputy principal investigator for the InSight mission. "Any kind of exploration is just not easy or guaranteed - ever."

Narrated by host and science journalist Leslie Mullen and InSight team members, each episode blends humor and captivating storytelling to dig into the journey of the lander and the people who have spent years working on it. New episodes, running between 20 and 30 minutes, will be released weekly as InSight gets closer to Mars. The final episode will cover what happens when the team tries to land InSight on the Red Planet.

If successful, the lander will be the first robotic explorer to study the planet's "inner space" - its crust, mantle and core - in an effort to better understand the early formation of rocky planets in our inner solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and rocky exoplanets.

Future seasons of the podcast will focus on different missions and take listeners on new journeys through the universe.

For the latest InSight updates, follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter.

To download and listen to "On a Mission" and other NASA podcasts, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/podcasts

To learn more about InSight, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

News Media Contact

Arielle Samuelson

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307

arielle.a.samuelson@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-250

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Mars 2020 Parachute a Go

In the early hours of Sept. 7, NASA broke a world record.

Less than 2 minutes after the launch of a 58-foot-tall (17.7-meter) Black Brant IX sounding rocket, a payload separated and began its dive back through Earth's atmosphere. When onboard sensors determined the payload had reached the appropriate height and Mach number (38 kilometers altitude, Mach 1.8), the payload deployed a parachute. Within four-tenths of a second, the 180-pound parachute billowed out from being a solid cylinder to being fully inflated.

It was the fastest inflation in history of a parachute this size and created a peak load of almost 70,000 pounds of force.

This wasn't just any parachute. The mass of nylon, Technora and Kevlar fibers that make up the parachute will play an integral part in landing NASA's state-of-the-art Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet in February 2021. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE) project conducted a series of sounding rocket tests to help decide which parachute design to use on the Mars 2020 mission.

Two different parachutes were evaluated during ASPIRE. The first test flight carried almost an exact copy of the parachute used to land NASA's Mars Science Laboratory.

On Oct. 3, NASA's Mars 2020 mission management and members of its Entry, Descent, and Landing team met at JPL in Pasadena, California, and determined that the strengthened parachute had passed its tests and was ready for its Martian debut.

"Mars 2020 will be carrying the heaviest payload yet to the surface of Mars, and like all our prior Mars missions, we only have one parachute and it has to work," said John McNamee, project manager of Mars 2020 at JPL. "The ASPIRE tests have shown in remarkable detail how our parachute will react when it is first deployed into a supersonic flow high above Mars. And let me tell you, it looks beautiful."

The 67,000-pound (37,000-kilogram) load was the highest ever survived by a supersonic parachute. That's about an 85-percent higher load than what scientists would expect the Mars 2020 parachute to encounter during its deployment in Mars' atmosphere.

"Earth's atmosphere near the surface is much denser than that near the Martian surface, by about 100 times," said Ian Clark, the test's technical lead from JPL. "But high up - around 23 miles (37 kilometers) - the atmospheric density on Earth is very similar to 6 miles (10 kilometers) above Mars, which happens to be the altitude that Mars 2020 will deploy its parachute."

With the ASPIRE tests complete, the endeavors of Clark and his compatriots will be confined to the lower part of the stratosphere for the time being. But that doesn't mean the fun times are over.

"We are all about helping 2020 stick its landing 28 months from now," said Clark. "I may not get to shoot rockets to the edge of space for a while, but when it comes to Mars - and when it comes to getting there and getting down there safely - there are always exciting challenges to work on around here."

The Mars 2020 project's parachute-testing series, ASPIRE, is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with support from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, for NASA's Space Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Sounding Rocket Program is based at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. Northrop Grumman provides mission planning, engineering services and field operations through the NASA Sounding Rocket Operations Contract. NASA's Heliophysics Division manages the sounding-rocket program for the agency.

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

Keith Koehler

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.

757-824-1579

keith.a.koehler@nasa.gov

2018-249

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Here's What Happens When NASA Has a Pumpkin-Carving Contest

While it may not be your typical Halloween fare, a pumpkin held aloft by a parachute and an air blower is par for the course when engineers engage in a pumpkin carving contest at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Once a year at Halloween, JPLers take a break from building robots that explore the solar system to craft dramatic creations that have as much in common with standard jack-o'-lanterns as paper airplanes do with NASA spacecraft. Now in its seventh year, the unofficial pumpkin carving contest gives engineers a chance to flex their creative muscles and bond as a team, said NASA mechanical engineer Mike Meacham, who is co-running the one-hour competition this year.

A pumpkin flies, after being engineered by Mike Meacham and his JPL team in the 2017 contest.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"I don't think, even at the time, they appreciated just how seriously our engineers were going to take it," he said of the first contest. In 2017, Meacham - who works on the entry, descent and landing of the Mars 2020 rover - and his team won third place with a green Frankenstein gourd that hovered in mid-air, suspended by a mini-parachute and an air blower.

Other past standouts include a team that transformed a pumpkin into a twinkling UFO in the midst of beaming up a (miniature) cow. Another team turned their pumpkin into a spinning carnival-swing ride, while a third created a robotic arm that could flip a light switch on and off.

A shy pumpkin turns off its lights in JPL's 2016 pumpkin carving contest.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Displayed together in a dark room, the creations flicker, lurch, glow and make noise in ways that defy the imagination. A panel of judges awards the first-place pumpkin the same day. The prize? Victory itself.

The rules are simple: no planning, carving or competing during work hours.

"They do it all in their own time," said Meacham, who's been brainstorming his ideas for six months. "They go home, use their own resources, plan it out, and all we give them is a pumpkin."

Iona Brockie, an engineer on the Mars 2020 rover, said the contest gives her a chance to admire the talent of her colleagues. After two years of placing second, her team took first last year, with a celestial pirate ship that sailed past Jupiter on an ocean of dry ice. Inspired by NASA's future mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa, Brockie and her teammates used their mechanical engineering know-how to plan out every step of their hour-long effort, down to five-minute intervals.

"Everyone gets so excited about this competition that has no prize other than bragging rights," said Brockie, who also helped build the cow-abduction pumpkin. "It's fun to see everybody bring the same kind of crazy energy that they do to making the flight projects to something as simple as a pumpkin carving contest."

JPL engineers created a spinning pumpkin carousel in the 2016 Halloween contest.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This year's contest takes place on Oct. 29, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT, during the engineering section's lunch break. The winners will be named in the afternoon.

The event will be covered live on NASA JPL's social media accounts. Photos and video will be posted on NASA JPL's Flickr account the same day.

News Media Contact

Arielle Samuelson

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307

arielle.a.samuelson@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-248

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NASA to Host Briefing on November Mars InSight Landing

NASA's upcoming landing of the first-ever mission to study the heart of Mars will be the topic of a media briefing at 1:30 p.m. EDT (10:30 a.m. PDT) Wednesday, Oct. 31 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The briefing will air live on NASA Television, the agency's website and the NASA InSight Facebook page.

NASA's InSight Mars Lander (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will land on the Red Planet at approximately 3 p.m. EST (noon PST) Monday, Nov. 26. InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all rocky planets, including Earth and its Moon, formed. The lander's instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes and a probe to monitor the flow of heat in the planet's subsurface.

Briefing participants include:

• Lori Glaze, acting director of the Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
• Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at JPL
• Sue Smrekar, InSight deputy principal investigator at JPL
• Jaime Singer, InSight instrument deployment lead at JPL

The public can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA or by leaving a comment on the stream of the event on the NASA InSight Facebook page.

For more information about InSight, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/insight

Follow the mission on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/nasainsight

News Media Contact

Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 202-358-1003

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

DC Agle

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-9011

agle@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-247B

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NASA's InSight Will Study Mars While Standing Still

You don't need wheels to explore Mars.

After touching down in November, NASA's InSight spacecraft will spread its solar panels, unfold a robotic arm ... and stay put. Unlike the space agency's rovers, InSight is a lander designed to study an entire planet from just one spot.

This sedentary science allows InSight to detect geophysical signals deep below the Martian surface, including marsquakes and heat. Scientists will also be able to track radio signals from the stationary spacecraft, which vary based on the wobble in Mars' rotation. Understanding this wobble could help solve the mystery of whether the planet's core is solid.

Here are five things to know about how InSight conducts its science.

1. InSight Can Measure Quakes Anywhere on the Planet

Quakes on Earth are usually detected using networks of seismometers. InSight has only one - called SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure) - so its science team will use some creative measurements to analyze seismic waves as they occur anywhere on the planet.

SEIS will measure seismic waves from marsquakes and meteorite strikes as they move through Mars. The speed of those waves changes depending on the material they're traveling through, helping scientists deduce what the planet's interior is made of.

Seismic waves come in a surprising number of flavors. Some vibrate across a planet's surface, while others ricochet off its center. They also move at different speeds. Seismologists can use each type as a tool to triangulate where and when a seismic event has happened.

This means InSight could have landed anywhere on Mars and, without moving, gathered the same kind of science.

2. InSight's Seismometer Needs Peace and Quiet

Seismometers are touchy by nature. They need to be isolated from "noise" in order to measure seismic waves accurately.

SEIS is sensitive enough to detect vibrations smaller than the width of a hydrogen atom. It will be the first seismometer ever set on the Martian surface, where it will be thousands of times more accurate than seismometers that sat atop the Viking landers.

To take advantage of this exquisite sensitivity, engineers have given SEIS a shell: a wind-and-thermal shield that InSight's arm will place over the seismometer. This protective dome presses down when wind blows over it; a Mylar-and-chainmail skirt keeps wind from blowing in. It also gives SEIS a cozy place to hide away from Mars' intense temperature swings, which can create minute changes in the instrument's springs and electronics.

3. InSight Has a Self-Hammering Nail

Have you ever tried to hammer a nail? Then you know holding it steady is key. InSight carries a nail that also needs to be held steady.

This unique instrument, called HP³ (Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package), holds a spike attached to a long tether. A mechanism inside the spike will hammer it up to 16 feet (5 meters) underground, dragging out the tether, which is embedded with heat sensors.

At that depth, it can detect heat trapped inside Mars since the planet first formed. That heat shaped the surface with volcanoes, mountain ranges and valleys. It may even have determined where rivers ran early in Mars' history.

4. InSight Can Land in a Safe Spot

Because InSight needs stillness - and because it can collect seismic and heat data from anywhere on the planet - the spacecraft is free to land in the safest location possible.

InSight's team selected a location on Mars' equator called Elysium Planitia - as flat and boring a spot as any on Mars. That makes landing just a bit easier, as there's less to crash into, fewer rocks to land on and lots of sunlight to power the spacecraft. The fact that InSight doesn't use much power and should have plenty of sunlight at Mars' equator means it can provide lots of data for scientists to study.

5. InSight Can Measure Mars' Wobble

InSight has two X-band antennas on its deck that make up a third instrument, called RISE (Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment). Radio signals from RISE will be measured over months, maybe even years, to study the tiny "wobble" in the rotation of the planet. That wobble is a sign of whether Mars' core is liquid or solid - a trait that could also shed light on the planet's thin magnetic field.

Collecting detailed data on this wobble hasn't happened since Mars Pathfinder's three-month mission in 1997 (although the Opportunity rover made a few measurements in 2011 while it remained still, waiting out the winter). Every time a stationary spacecraft sends radio signals from Mars, it can help scientists improve their measurements.

About InSight

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), support the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument.

For more information about InSight, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-246

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Newborn Stars Blow Bubbles in the Cat's Paw Nebula

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Cat's Paw Nebula, so named for the large, round features that create the impression of a feline footprint. The nebula is a star-forming region in the Milky Way galaxy, located in the constellation Scorpius. Estimates of its distance from Earth range from about 4,200 to about 5,500 light-years.

Framed by green clouds, the bright red bubbles are the dominant feature in the image, which was created using data from two of Spitzer's instruments. After gas and dust inside the nebula collapse to form stars, the stars may in turn heat up the pressurized gas surrounding them, causing it to expand into space and create bubbles.

The green areas show places where radiation from hot stars collided with large molecules called "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," causing them to fluoresce.

In some cases, the bubbles may eventually "burst," creating the U-shaped features that are particularly visible in the image below, which was created using data from just one of Spitzer's instruments.

The Cat's Paw Nebula, imaged here by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope using the IRAC instrument, is a star-forming region inside the Milky Way Galaxy. The dark filament running through the middle of the nebula is a particularly dense region of gas and dust. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Larger view

Spitzer is an infrared telescope, and infrared light is useful to astronomers because it can penetrate thick clouds of gas and dust better than optical light (the kind visible to the human eye). The black filaments running horizontally through the nebula are regions of gas and dust so dense, not even infrared light can pass through them. These dense regions may soon be sites where another generation of stars will form.

The Cat's Paw star-forming region is estimated to be between 24 and 27 parsecs (80 and 90 light years) across. It extends beyond the left side of these images and intersects with a similar-sized star-forming region, NGC 6357. That region is also known as the Lobster Nebula - an unlikely companion for a cat.

The top image was compiled using data from the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) and the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) aboard Spitzer. MIPS collects an additional "color" of light in the infrared range, which reveals the red-colored features, created by dust that has been warmed by the hot gas and the light from nearby stars. The second image is based on data from IRAC alone, so this dust is not visible.

The images were pulled from data collected for the Galactic Legacy Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire project (GLIMPSE). Using data from Spitzer, GLIMPSE created the most accurate map ever of the large central bar of the galaxy and showed that the galaxy is riddled with gas bubbles like those seen here.

More information about Spitzer is available at the following sites:

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/SPITZER/GLIMPSE/overview.html

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

626-808-2469

calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-244

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NASA's Juno Mission Detects Jupiter Wave Trains

Massive structures of moving air that appear like waves in Jupiter's atmosphere were first detected by NASA's Voyager missions during their flybys of the gas-giant world in 1979. The JunoCam camera aboard NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter has also imaged the atmosphere. JunoCam data has detected atmospheric wave trains, towering atmospheric structures that trail one after the other as they roam the planet, with most concentrated near Jupiter's equator.

The JunoCam imager has resolved smaller distances between individual wave crests in these trains than ever seen before. This research provides valuable information on both the dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere and its structure in the regions underneath the waves.

"JunoCam has counted more distinct wave trains than any other spacecraft mission since Voyager," said Glenn Orton, a Juno scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "The trains, which consist of as few as two waves and as many as several dozen, can have a distance between crests as small as about 40 miles (65 kilometers) and as large as about 760 miles (1,200 kilometers). The shadow of the wave structure in one image allowed us to estimate the height of one wave to be about 6 miles (10 kilometers) high."

Most of the waves are seen in elongated wave trains, spread out in an east-west direction, with wave crests that are perpendicular to the orientation of the train. Other fronts in similar wave trains tilt significantly with respect to the orientation of the wave train, and still other wave trains follow slanted or meandering paths.

"The waves can appear close to other Jovian atmospheric features, near vortices or along flow lines, and others exhibit no relationship with anything nearby," said Orton. "Some wave trains appear as if they are converging, and others appear to be overlapping, possibly at two different atmospheric levels. In one case, wave fronts appear to be radiating outward from the center of a cyclone."

Although analysis is ongoing, most waves are expected to be atmospheric gravity waves - up-and-down ripples that form in the atmosphere above something that disturbs air flow, such as a thunderstorm updraft, disruptions of flow around other features, or from some other disturbance that JunoCam does not detect.

The JunoCam instrument is uniquely qualified to make such a discovery. JunoCam is a color, visible-light camera which offers a wide-angle field of view designed to capture remarkable pictures of Jupiter's poles and cloud tops. As Juno's eyes, it helps provide context for the spacecraft's other instruments. JunoCam was included on the spacecraft primarily for public engagement purposes, although its images also are helpful to the science team.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. To date, it has completed 15 science passes over Jupiter. Juno's 16th science pass will be on Oct. 29. 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. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colorado, 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:

http://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno

http://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

2018-245

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NASA's First Image of Mars from a CubeSat

NASA's MarCO mission was designed to find out if briefcase-sized spacecraft called CubeSats could survive the journey to deep space. Now, MarCO - which stands for Mars Cube One - has Mars in sight.

One of the twin MarCO CubeSats snapped this image of Mars on Oct. 3 - the first image of the Red Planet ever produced by this class of tiny, low-cost spacecraft. The two CubeSats are officially called MarCO-A and MarCO-B but nicknamed "EVE" and "Wall-E" by their engineering team.

A wide-angle camera on top of MarCO-B produced the image as a test of exposure settings. The MarCO mission, led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, hopes to produce more images as the CubeSats approach Mars ahead of Nov. 26. That's when they'll demonstrate their communications capabilities while NASA's InSight spacecraft attempts to land on the Red Planet. (The InSight mission won't rely on them, however; NASA's Mars orbiters will be relaying the spacecraft's data back to Earth.)

This image was taken from a distance of roughly 8 million miles (12.8 million kilometers) from Mars. The MarCOs are "chasing" Mars, which is a moving target as it orbits the Sun. In order to be in place for InSight's landing, the CubeSats have to travel roughly 53 million miles (85 million kilometers). They have already traveled 248 million miles (399 million kilometers).

MarCO-B's wide-angle camera looks straight out from the deck of the CubeSat. Parts related to the spacecraft's high-gain antenna are visible on either side of the image. Mars appears as a small red dot at the right of the image.

To take the image, the MarCO team had to program the CubeSat to rotate in space so that the deck of its boxy "body" was pointing at Mars. After several test images, they were excited to see that clear, red pinprick.

"We've been waiting six months to get to Mars," said Cody Colley, MarCO's mission manager at JPL. "The cruise phase of the mission is always difficult, so you take all the small wins when they come. Finally seeing the planet is definitely a big win for the team."

For more information about MarCO, visit:

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

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-243

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Caltech's Frances Arnold Wins Nobel Prize, Son Is JPL Mars Flight Tech

Click here to read about Frances Arnold's Nobel Prize.

"What the heck does Mom want? Oh, Mom probably doesn't understand the time difference, she's in Dallas right now and is probably still thinking it's California time...maybe she just wants me to go check on her cats..." A litany of mundane explanations ran through James Bailey's bleary mind at 3:23 a.m. on October 3 when he was awakened from a deep sleep by three phone calls from his mother's cell number. Bailey silenced his phone for the first two, getting grumpier with each ring. Call #3 did the trick. He picked up the phone and said groggily, "What do you want?" With great excitement and maybe a tinge of impatience, his mother said, "I wish you had picked up your phone, but I just won the Nobel Prize."

Bailey bolted upright, thrilled by the news and fueled by adrenaline. "I was overjoyed for her. It's fairly difficult to verbalize how I feel," he said. He never did manage to go back to sleep that night. In a few hours, he'd be able to share the news with his colleagues when he arrived at his job at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Building 179, High Bay 1 -- the clean room where he is a flight technician working on Mars 2020.

Bailey's mother is Frances Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. Her 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors her pioneering work in creating new, improved enzymes in the laboratory using the principles of evolution. Arnold shares the prize with two other scientists.

Arnold's bio has an abundance of academic milestones and stellar awards. She was the first woman to receive the 2011 Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering. She is also the first woman and one of just a few individuals elected to all three branches of the National Academies: for Medicine, Sciences and Engineering.

Bailey traveled a different path than his mother to his job at JPL. Growing up in Pasadena, he didn't thrive in conventional schools, so he pursued vocational training in welding and machining. After high school, he worked on high-performance cars at a local shop. At 20, he joined the Army, where he was trained as a Blackhawk helicopter mechanic and became part of a flight crew. After wrapping up six years of military service, including crucial work on medical evacuation helicopter teams in Afghanistan, he learned JPL was looking for people with an aviation background to work as flight technicians. Bailey fit the bill, and he was hired.

"If you do something wrong in aviation, lives are at stake, and that same level of detail needs to be taken here, because we send spacecraft that we can't repair, so they have to be perfect the first time," Bailey said.

Eventually, Bailey hopes to continue his education in aerospace and mechanical engineering. After all, engineering and science are a family tradition. In addition to his mother's career, his biological father, James E. Bailey, was a chemistry professor at ETH Zurich, and his stepfather, Andrew Lange, was a Caltech professor of astrophysics. His mother's father was a nuclear engineer, one of her brothers worked on developing microprocessors, and her other brother is a professor who conducts cancer research at Rutgers University.

Bailey has vivid childhood memories of visiting Caltech labs with his parents, which he believes pushed him toward science and mechanics. But he added, "I really think it's genetic." And in his family, that affinity for STEM fields is shared by men and women.

Bailey met a lot of female students and professors through his parents. "When I first heard about the struggles of women and STEM, I was a little surprised, like, 'This is really a thing?' That's because I had a small, biased view of it, being surrounded by brilliant female engineers and professors."

Bailey said that since the Nobel Prize announcement, his mother has received a massive influx of bottles of Champagne, flower deliveries and phone calls, plus group emails from every corner of the family. When Arnold goes to the official Nobel ceremony in Sweden in December, she will be accompanied by her family, and she will bring her graduate students to express gratitude for all they've done and to inspire them to pursue their dreams.

"My mom would want everybody to know that it's a collaboration of everyone to achieve these big goals," Bailey said. He has seen firsthand the value of collaborations in his mother's career and in his own. "The beautiful balance of working here at JPL is that you have some of the most brilliant minds from all backgrounds, whether technical or theoretical, you have the camaraderie of the sharpest technicians and others working with some of the smartest engineers, and they find the perfect balance of making it all work," he explained.

When Bailey is not at work sporting a bunny suit in a clean room, he is mentoring his younger brother who wants to be a machinist, remodeling a house, and restoring classic cars -- a '66 Chevelle and a '71 Blazer.

"I've always got to keep a wrench in my hands, so I work on the rover during the day, and I work on my projects at night, but I need to be mechanically involved," Bailey said.

News Media Contact

DC Agle / Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-9011 / 393-2433

agle@jpl.nasa.gov / Andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Jane Platt

2018-241

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Scientists to Debate Landing Site for Next Mars Rover

Hundreds of scientists and Mars-exploration enthusiasts will convene in a hotel ballroom just north of Los Angeles later this week to present, discuss and deliberate the future landing site for NASA's next Red Planet rover - Mars 2020. The three-day workshop is the fourth and final in a series designed to ensure NASA receives the broadest range of data and opinion from the scientific community before the agency chooses where to send the new rover.

The Mars 2020 mission is tasked with not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life. The landing site for Mars 2020 is of great interest to the planetary community because, among the rover's new medley of science gear for surface exploration, it carries a sample system that will collect rock and soil samples and set them aside in a "cache" on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth. The next Mars landing, after Mars 2020, could very well be a vehicle that would retrieve these Mars 2020 samples.

"The Mars 2020 landing site could set the stage for Mars exploration for the next decade," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "I'm looking forward to the spirited debate and critical input from the science and engineering community. Once returned to Earth, these samples will likely become the most analyzed soil samples in history, as they promise to address some very tantalizing questions driving NASA's Science program."

The workshop begins with an opening address by the lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Michael Meyer. After project status, engineering constraints, and site-assessment criteria are discussed come the presentations. Fair warning: Expect plenty of technical jargon as terms like biosignatures, geochemical conditions, impact deformation, biogenetic potential, olivine lithologies, and serpentinization and its astrobiological potential roll off presenters' tongues.

"We have been doing these workshops in support of 2020 landing site selection since 2014," said Matt Golombek, cochair of the Mars Landing Site Steering Committee from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "At our first workshop, we started with about 30 candidate landing sites, and after additional orbital imaging and a second landing site workshop, we had a recommendation of eight sites to move forward for further evaluation. There were so many great locations to choose from, the whittling-down process was tough. This time around, with four finalists, it promises to be even more difficult. Each site has its own intriguing science potential and knowledgeable advocates."

Champions for four landing options will take their turn at the podium, presenting and defending their favorite parcel on the Red Planet. It is one more site than was expected after the completion of the third workshop, in 2017, where three locations on Mars were recommended for consideration - Columbia Hills, Jezero Crater and Northeast Syrtis.

"At the end of the workshop in February of 2017, there were only three sites on our radar as potential Mars 2020 landing locations," said Ken Farley, project scientist of Mars 2020 at JPL. "But in the ensuing months, a proposal came forward for a landing site that is in between Jezero and Northeast Syrtis. Our goal is to get to the right site that provides the maximum science for Mars 2020, and this new site - dubbed 'Midway' - was viewed as worthy of being included in the discussions."

On the final day, after all presentations have concluded, workshop participants will weigh the positives and negatives of each site. The results of these deliberations will be provided to the Mars 2020 Project, which will incorporate them into a recommendation to NASA Headquarters in Washington, where final selection will be made. The announcement of the Mars 2020 landing site is expected to come by the end of the year.

"I have attended all the workshops so far, and none have disappointed when it comes to intelligent advocation and lively debate," said Farley. "But this is what science is all about - the cogent and respectable exchange of ideas. The passion of the participants shows just how much they care about Mars exploration. They know they are playing a key role in the process, and they know how important the landing site for Mars 2020 will be."

Mars 2020 will launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in July 2020. It is expected to reach Mars in February 2021.

The rover will conduct geological assessments of its landing site on Mars, determine the habitability of the environment, search for signs of ancient Martian life, and assess natural resources and hazards for future human explorers. Scientists will use the instruments aboard the rover to identify and collect samples of rock and soil, encase them in sealed tubes and leave them on the planet's surface for potential return to Earth on a future Mars mission.

The Mars 2020 Project at JPL in Pasadena, California, manages rover development for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA's Launch Services Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.

For more information on the workshop, go to:

https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/wkshp_2018_10.cfm

For information on how to listen in to workshop presentations, go to:

https://ac.arc.nasa.gov/landing-site-workshop/

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

Story updated on October 16 at 7:20 p.m. to correct quote of Dr. Zurbuchen.

News Media Contact

DC Agle

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-9011

agle@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-240

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NASA Invites Media to View Orion Test Capsule and Recovery Hardware

Media are invited to see a test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, as well as the hardware that will be used to recover the spacecraft on its return from space, at 9 a.m. PST Wednesday, Nov. 7, at Naval Base San Diego.

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NASA to Host Briefing on November Mars InSight Landing

NASA's upcoming landing of the first-ever mission to study the heart of Mars will be the topic of a media briefing at 1:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 31 at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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NASA Awards Library and Information Services Technical Support Contract

NASA has awarded the Goddard Library and Information Services Technical Support (GLISTS) contract to Select Federal Services, LLC of Sweetwater, Tennessee. The work will be performed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

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NASA Invites Media to Learn About Urban Air Mobility

NASA is inviting media to attend a two-day Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge Industry Day beginning at 8 a.m. PDT Thursday, Nov. 1, at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront.

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Coming to America: Orion’s European Service Module Arrives for First Mission

NASA is inviting media to its Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9 a.m. EST Friday, Nov. 16, for an event marking the arrival from Bremen, Germany, of the European Service Module – the powerhouse that will supply NASA’s Orion spacecraft with electricity, propulsion, thermal control, air and water.

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NASA Invites Media to Visit Nanocomp Technologies, Discuss Space Technology Partnership

Media are invited to tour Nanocomp Technologies in Merrimack, New Hampshire, at 10:45 a.m. EDT Monday, Oct. 29, and learn about a nanotechnology that could enable lighter spacecraft and launch vehicles, making spaceflight and exploration more affordable.

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NASA Invites Media to Northrop Grumman Cygnus Launch from Virginia

Media accreditation now is open for the launch from Virginia of Northrop Grumman’s 10th commercial resupply services mission to deliver NASA science investigations, supplies and equipment to the International Space Station aboard its Cygnus spacecraft.

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NASA to Host Briefings, Events for ICON Launch to Study Space Weather

NASA will host a series of media briefings leading up to the Friday, Oct. 26, launch of its Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission to study the dynamic zone high in the atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above.

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New NASA Podcast Shares ‘Invisible’ Stories of Spaceflight

Today, NASA released a new, limited-edition podcast called The Invisible Network, the first NASA podcast to embrace narrative storytelling. All six episodes can be downloaded and binged on NASA’s website, SoundCloud and Apple Podcasts.

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NASA Television to Air Live Interviews with Astronaut Nick Hague

NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who has returned home to Houston this weekend after his launch to the International Space Station was aborted, will be interviewed by media about his experience at 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 16.

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After Two Long Careers, QuikSCAT Rings Down the Curtain

Launched in June 1999 for an intended two-year mission, NASA's SeaWinds scatterometer instrument on the QuikSCAT spacecraft was turned off on Oct. 2 in accordance with its end-of-mission plan. QuikSCAT spent its first decade creating an unprecedented record of the speed and direction of winds at the ocean surface. Then, for another nine years, it served as the gold standard of accuracy against which new spaceborne scatterometers were calibrated.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, QuikSCAT was a unique national resource that far surpassed NASA's original science objective for the mission. During its 10 years of observing winds over the global ocean surface, QuikSCAT measurements were used by the world's weather forecasting agencies to improve forecasts and identify and monitor hurricanes and other storms far out in the open seas. Its data also provided critical information for monitoring, researching, modeling, and forecasting the atmosphere, ocean, ice and climate.

Among its many accomplishments:

• QuikSCAT discovered that hurricane-strength winds occur frequently in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, where such strong winds were not previously expected to exist.

• It provided high-resolution observations of the dramatically accelerating changes in sea ice cover on the Arctic Ocean.

• The mission's measurements were used widely beyond weather forecasting and research -- for example, to help identify efficient shipping routes, plan new offshore wind farms, and guide search-and-rescue operations at sea.

Michael Freilich, the QuikSCAT mission's original principal investigator and now director of NASA's Earth Science Division, noted, "QuikSCAT operated in space for nearly two decades, and we are certain that its impact and legacy will last much longer."

Ernesto Rodríguez, QuikSCAT project scientist at JPL, said, "The decommissioning of QuikSCAT marks the passing of an era. Many scientists and forecasters have built their careers over the last 20 years using QuikSCAT. Its data led to major discoveries on the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere."

A few months after QuikSCAT's 10th anniversary, an age-related problem caused its spinning antenna to stop rotating, reducing its observing swath to only 19 miles (30 kilometers) wide. The extreme accuracy of this narrow swath measurement, however, allowed QuikSCAT to take on a second mission: calibrating newer satellites to enable a much longer data record of ocean winds.

Satellite instruments are regularly calibrated to ensure their readings match other data that are known to be accurate, and to correct for an instrument's normal drift in accuracy over time. QuikSCAT's exceptional stability made it invaluable in assuring that newer missions from the Indian and European space agencies and from NASA are providing apples-to-apples measurements. This function proved so important to the research community that QuikSCAT's decommissioning was postponed twice to allow time for new scatterometers to be launched and calibrated.

QuikSCAT project manager Rob Gaston of JPL said, "It's a testament to the research community's commitment to climate research that QuikSCAT's intercalibration mission has continued to receive the highest possible marks for science relevance in the reviews that NASA follows to establish funding priorities for missions like QuikSCAT. The intercalibration mission has enabled research that would not have been possible but for the remarkable stability of the SeaWinds instrument and the exceptional reliability and longevity of the QuikSCAT spacecraft."

QuikSCAT was originally a recovery mission after the loss of Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite, which hosted the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT). The QuikSCAT mission was conceived, developed and launched in less than two years. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft bus, and JPL designed and built the SeaWinds instrument. QuikSCAT was operated by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-354-4269

Esprit.Smith@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA's Earth Science News Team

2018-239

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With Thick Ice Gone, Arctic Sea Ice Changes More Slowly

The Arctic Ocean's blanket of sea ice has changed since 1958 from predominantly older, thicker ice to mostly younger, thinner ice, according to new research published by NASA scientist Ron Kwok of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. With so little thick, old ice left, the rate of decrease in ice thickness has slowed. New ice grows faster but is more vulnerable to weather and wind, so ice thickness is now more variable, rather than dominated by the effect of global warming.

Working from a combination of satellite records and declassified submarine sonar data, NASA scientists have constructed a 60-year record of Arctic sea ice thickness. Right now, Arctic sea ice is the youngest and thinnest its been since we started keeping records. More than 70 percent of Arctic sea ice is now seasonal, which means it grows in the winter and melts in the summer, but doesn't last from year to year. This seasonal ice melts faster and breaks up easier, making it much more susceptible to wind and atmospheric conditions.

Kwok's research, published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, combined decades of declassified U.S. Navy submarine measurements with more recent data from four satellites to create the 60-year record of changes in Arctic sea ice thickness. He found that since 1958, Arctic ice cover has lost about two-thirds of its thickness, as averaged across the Arctic at the end of summer. Older ice has shrunk in area by almost 800,000 square miles (more than 2 million square kilometers). Today, 70 percent of the ice cover consists of ice that forms and melts within a single year, which scientists call seasonal ice.

Sea ice of any age is frozen ocean water. However, as sea ice survives through several melt seasons, its characteristics change. Multiyear ice is thicker, stronger and rougher than seasonal ice. It is much less salty than seasonal ice; Arctic explorers used it as drinking water. Satellite sensors observe enough of these differences that scientists can use spaceborne data to distinguish between the two types of ice.

Thinner, weaker seasonal ice is innately more vulnerable to weather than thick, multiyear ice. It can be pushed around more easily by wind, as happened in the summer of 2013. During that time, prevailing winds piled up the ice cover against coastlines, which made the ice cover thicker for months.

The ice's vulnerability may also be demonstrated by the increased variation in Arctic sea ice thickness and extent from year to year over the last decade. In the past, sea ice rarely melted in the Arctic Ocean. Each year, some multiyear ice flowed out of the ocean into the East Greenland Sea and melted there, and some ice grew thick enough to survive the melt season and become multiyear ice. As air temperatures in the polar regions have warmed in recent decades, however, large amounts of multiyear ice now melt within the Arctic Ocean itself. Far less seasonal ice now thickens enough over the winter to survive the summer. As a result, not only is there less ice overall, but the proportions of multiyear ice to seasonal ice have also changed in favor of the young ice.

Seasonal ice now grows to a depth of about six feet (two meters) in winter, and most of it melts in summer. That basic pattern is likely to continue, Kwok said. "The thickness and coverage in the Arctic are now dominated by the growth, melting and deformation of seasonal ice."

The increase in seasonal ice also means record-breaking changes in ice cover such as those of the 1990s and 2000s are likely to be less common, Kwok noted. In fact, there has not been a new record sea ice minimum since 2012, despite years of warm weather in the Arctic. "We've lost so much of the thick ice that changes in thickness are going to be slower due to the different behavior of this ice type," Kwok said.

Kwok used data from U.S. Navy submarine sonars from 1958 to 2000; satellite altimeters on NASA's ICESat and the European CryoSat-2, which span from 2003 to 2018; and scatterometer measurements from NASA's QuikSCAT and the European ASCAT from 1999 to 2017.

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4269

Esprit.Smith@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA's Earth Science News Team

2018-238

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Fight and Flight: One Woman's Fearless Journey to the Stars

The year was 1975. "Jaws"was the biggest movie in theaters, "Love Will Keep Us Together" was the top song on the radio and 10-year-old Nagin Cox's home life was unraveling. It was a time when Cox thought only about making it to age 18 so she could be free.

"I remember looking up at the stars and thinking, 'I'm going to live and get through this,'" Cox recalls. "'I need to set a goal. I need something so meaningful it will help me get through the next eight years.'"

That goal revealed itself when she was 14, a curly-haired Indian girl fascinated by "Star Trek" and Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." She wanted to explore the universe. And no, she didn't want to be an astronaut.

"If you really want to go where someone has never been, you want to be with the robots. They truly explore first," she says. "There was one place that did that consistently and that was NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

She just needed to figure out how.

***

Cox, now 53, is celebrating 25 years since first walking through the gates of JPL. Since her first day in 1993, she has written the acronym IWWTWTF in the top right-hand corner of every notebook. It stands for I was willing to wash the floors-a reminder of just how badly she wanted to work at NASA.

For two-plus decades, she has taken part in such iconic NASA missions as Galileo, the Mars rovers Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, the exoplanet explorer Kepler, and InSight, a lander that will measure "quakes" to study the Martian interior.

Cox has boundless energy beneath a cherubic face with wide, inquisitive eyes and a melodic voice. With her warmth and good-natured sense of humor, it's hard to imagine she's the product of a tough childhood. But, in many ways, her upbringing helped deliver her to her calling.

"I use three words to describe myself," she says. "I'm an explorer, an engineer and a fighter."

THE FIGHTER

The fighter came first.

Cox was born in India and raised primarily in Kansas City, Kansas, the second-oldest of four siblings. Her father was a political science professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Her mother stayed at home to look after the family, but studied sociology in India and was one of the first women in her province to earn a master's degree. Cox's relationship with her mom was especially close. "She was a fountain of love and support and encouragement," she says.

But from a young age, Cox had a different kind of relationship with her father. "Growing up, I just wanted my dad to love me," she recalls. "I thought, 'What is the problem?' Then I realized: It has something to do with being a girl."

As she got older, she began to notice different expectations in the household for boys and girls. Her two brothers were sent to a middle school known for math and science, and she was sent to a different school specializing in art and humanities. At dinnertime, the women in the family were expected to cook and serve food.

For years, she remembers her father saying girls were "worthless." During this time, Cox grew especially close to her mother.

"My mom was a gentle, caring, nurturing soul. Because of the battle that developed between my father and I-I am not a gentle, caring, nurturing soul. I just don't go quietly," Cox says, adding that her mother always understood her. "'You were raised in a battleground, and therefore you are always my fighting daughter,' she would say. 'I don't have to worry about you because you will never be stepped on. If anyone tries, you will raise hell.'"

The turning point was in 1981. A high school junior, Cox spotted an Air Force trailer behind her school. Even though she didn't want to be an astronaut, she knew many had a military background and it might be her ticket to NASA.

A deal was on: Get into college and the Air Force would pay her way. And she knew exactly which college. "At the end of 'Cosmos,' it would say, 'Carl Sagan: Cornell University.' I saw that and thought, 'I'm going to Cornell.'"

That spring, Cox's advisers started asking which colleges she would choose from, but she hadn't heard anything. Then it dawned on her: Her father was throwing away her letters. She eventually got the good news: She had been accepted into Cornell.

She took the Cornell letter and her Air Force scholarship award and walked up to her father. She had two words for him: "I win."

THE ENGINEER

Cox started Cornell in the fall of 1982, double majoring in psychology and operations research and industrial engineering.

"She was so serious about her studies," recalls her college friend Shae Renali. "Engineering at Cornell is a really rigorous program. To think that you would take on Cornell engineering and add another major on top of it-that was mind-boggling to me."

In college, Cox also met her future husband, Earl, a tall, handsome engineer with a megawatt smile. They met through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps-she in the Air Force program and he in the Navy program-and dated for six weeks before she dumped him because she thought he was "an arrogant know-it-all." Alas, he was a lovable, arrogant know-it-all-the two later eloped in 1992.

After four years at Cornell, Cox swapped her graduation gown for an Air Force uniform in 1986. With NASA as her endgame, she set her sights on systems engineering at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, helping build F-16 aircrew training systems. She later earned her master's degree in space operations engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology and worked as an orbital analyst for U.S. Space Command Operations at Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base.

After six years of active duty, Cox mailed in her application for an engineering position at JPL. She waited-and was met with resounding silence. But a high school reunion helped her eventually connect with a former classmate working at JPL. She called him soon after and learned he was about to leave for graduate school.

"If I had not called then, or just a few months later, I would have missed him," she recalls. "Instead, I got hired into his group just as he left."

THE EXPLORER

"Every day, I am bone-deep fulfilled being here," Cox says from her office on the fourth floor of JPL's Flight Projects building, which sits in the middle of 177 acres of the sprawling JPL campus. "It's about legacy-being part of something greater than yourself."

And something greater requires sacrifice, including Thanksgivings spent in Mission Control and missing friends' weddings.

The work doesn't let up these days, either. On a recent Wednesday, she had a "three-rover day": She was on shift for Curiosity all day, went to dinner with the Mars Exploration Rovers team in the evening and then came home to work on Mars 2020 at night.

Cox is "solar-powered," she says, and works best from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., a window she calls her "prime time." A typical day will start at 5:45 a.m., when she rolls out of bed, opens up her laptop on the treadmill and works out while checking off her to-do list. On especially busy weeks, she'll work through the weekend at home. Her husband, Earl, who knows not to bother her during those precious hours, will slip her a plate of toast while whispering with a smile, "Prime time."

Even though there is a back entrance to a parking lot much closer to her office, Cox prefers to drive onto lab through the main entrance, where she can see the NASA logo and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sign.

"I don't drink coffee and I don't drink tea, but I do like to see that sign in the morning to start the day off right," she says.

On the Mars 2020 mission, the next rover that will fly to Mars, she's both the deputy team lead for the engineering operations team and the operations test and training manager, helping develop operations processes and tools for operating the rover.

Rob Manning, JPL's chief engineer, has known Cox since her early days on Galileo and supervised her on the Mars Exploration Rovers after she knocked on his door and asked to work on Spirit and Opportunity as a systems engineer.

"She's got all three: She's got passion, she's got discipline, she has perseverance in the face of obstacles," he says. "She's one of the most tenacious individuals I've ever met."

Ask Cox how she has the strength to do all she does with such energy, enthusiasm and focus, and she has a simple answer. "Work doesn't feel like work," she replies. "It's where I want to be."

In Cox's free time-which must exist on some separate, invisible plane of time-she is often traveling the world, speaking to audiences about exploring the universe. To date, she's given almost 700 lectures in 20 years of outreach, has nearly 2 million views on her "Mars Time" TED talk, and has visited dozens of countries on STEM diplomacy trips, many as a U.S. State Department speaker since 2004-all on personal vacation time.

In Jordan, children traveled for four hours by bus from rural areas to hear her speak. In Pakistan, she was escorted by 12 men carrying machine guns to a small town where, in addition to her career lectures, she taught self-defense classes for young girls. And in Morocco, one of the students asked her one day, "Do you know how lucky you are to live and work in the United States?"

"Yes, I do," she replied. "I think about that every day, and that's why I'm here."

JOURNEYING ON

Having come so far in her journey of space exploration, Cox has discovered a sense of peace and forgiveness that she never expected. The challenges of her childhood have given way to an adulthood full of satisfaction, wonder and happiness. Her parents eventually divorced and her mother learned to drive at 40 and got a job at a bank; her father, in later years, "tried to learn to love more." While both passed away several years ago, she has come to an accepting, even good-humored, perspective of her upbringing now.

"Your parents are a product of their own childhood issues and their cultures. It seems like we all ought to be forgiving of each other, especially our parents."

Cox leads an active social life that has included hobbies like dragon boating, sprint triathlons and improvisational comedy. On the philanthropic end, she has volunteered for suicide prevention programs, is the first engineer to sit on Human Rights Watch's advisory committee for women's rights, and served on the Griffith Observatory board for more than 10 years.

Jordan Evans, the deputy director of engineering and science at JPL, knows what makes her stand out. "She's not self-centered or arrogant in any way," he says. "She's genuinely happy, genuinely positive and genuinely wants to make the world a better place."

Cox became what that young girl in Kansas hoped to be so many years ago: an explorer of the universe. "I have never expected that anyone would remember my name," she says. "But I'm hopeful they will remember my missions."

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NASA Administrator Statement on Deputy Administrator Confirmation

Statement from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine about the Senate confirmation of James Morhard as the agency’s deputy administrator

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Missouri, Colorado Students to Speak with Astronaut on Space Station

Elementary school students from Missouri and Colorado will talk live with an astronaut on the International Space Station next week.

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NASA to Air International Space Station Update Briefing Today

NASA will hold a news conference at noon EDT today, to provide a status update on the International Space Station following this morning’s Soyuz spacecraft abort during launch that ended with the safe landing of two Expedition 57 crew members.

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NASA Statement on Soyuz MS-10 Launch Abort

The following is a statement about Thursday’s Soyuz MS-10 launch aboard to the International Space Station:

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All Eyes on Hurricane Michael

Hurricane Michael plowed into the Florida panhandle Wednesday, Oct. 10, as a major Category 4 storm -- the strongest hurricane ever to hit that region. Many NASA instruments are keeping tabs on Michael from space, including the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR).

The first image, taken by AIRS, shows Hurricane Michael just off the west coast of Florida on Oct. 10 in the early morning hours local time. The large purple area indicates very cold clouds at about -90°F (-68°C) carried high into the atmosphere by deep thunderstorms. These storm clouds are associated with heavy rainfall. The eye, which is much warmer than the surrounding clouds, appears in green. The red areas moving away from the storm indicate temperatures of around 60°F (15°C), typical of the surface of Earth at night. These red areas are mostly cloud-free.

MISR carries nine cameras fixed at different angles, each of which viewed Michael over the course of approximately seven minutes when it was just off Florida's west coast on Tuesday, Oct. 9.

Images from the nine views are used to calculate the height of the cloud tops, and the motion of the clouds between the views provides information on wind speed and direction. This first MISR image shows the view from the central, downward-pointing camera (left), the calculated cloud-top heights (middle) and wind velocity arrows (right) superimposed on top. The length of the arrows is proportional to wind speed, and the colors show the altitude of the cloud tops in kilometers.

MISR's stereo anaglyph shows a three-dimensional view of Michael that combines two of MISR's camera angles. Using 3D red-blue glasses, you can see a number of bright "clumps." These clumps, called "vortical hot spots," are groups of strong thunderstorms embedded in the larger circulation of the hurricane. They indicate the rapid transport of heat energy from the ocean surface into the storm and usually occur when a hurricane intensifies quickly.

The National Hurricane Center clocked Michael's sustained wind speed at 150 mph (240 kph) just before noon local time on Wednesday, Oct. 10. It is expected to bring strong winds, storm surges and heavy rainfall to much of the southeast.

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 Earth's weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations down to Earth's surface, even in the presence of heavy clouds. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations, and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, in Pasadena, California.

MISR was built and is managed by JPL 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.

More information about AIRS is available here: https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/

More information on MISR is available here: https://misr.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4269

esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-237

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Mars Virtual Reality Software Wins NASA Award

A mixed-reality software that allows scientists and engineers to virtually walk on Mars recently received NASA's 2018 Software of the Year Award.

OnSight uses imagery from NASA's Curiosity rover to create an immersive 3D terrain model, allowing users to wander the actual dunes and valleys explored by the robot. The goal of the software, a collaboration between Microsoft and JPL's Ops Lab, is to bring scientists closer to the experience of being in the field. Unlike geologists on Earth, who can get up close and personal with the terrain they study, Martian geologists have a harder time visualizing their environment through 2D imagery from Mars.

"Feeling like you're standing on Mars really gives you a different sense of Mars than just looking at the pictures," said Parker Abercrombie, OnSight team lead. "And I think it's a really powerful way to bring people to these places that they physically can't visit."

"Being able to visualize Curiosity's drives and virtually walk them before we actually do it with the rover is really helpful to give me a sense of how safe or challenging the terrain will be," said Abigail Fraeman, a member of Curiosity's science team.

In addition to studying the geology of Mars, the software allows scientists at any location to "meet" on Mars with avatars that can walk, point and interact with one another.

These virtual field trips help the science team study Martian geology using Curiosity data in a collaborative setting. In the future, OnSight will be adapted for the Mars 2020 rover and could be applied to other extreme environments that are difficult to visit.

"I feel like OnSight has evolved into all these different subpaths," said Alice Winter, a user-experience researcher for OnSight. "It's about the scientists, but it's also about making the platform something that everyone can access."

The team is working to make a version of the software available to the public. An exhibit highlighting the OnSight experience, "Destination: Mars," had a limited run at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center in 2016. "Access Mars," a Google collaboration built on WebVR, was released on 2017 and runs on a desktop browser. .

NASA's Software of the Year of the Year Award honors the best software developed at NASA. "We are honored to receive this recognition and grateful for the investment that the institution has made in supporting this emerging technology," said Abercrombie.

The following teams were selected for honorable mention:

• Ames Research Center: NASA Task Load Index (TLX) iOS
• Glenn Research Center: LEWICE3D
• Goddard Space Flight Center: NASA Worldview and Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS)
• Langley Research Center: Assured Geo-Containment for Unmanned Aircraft
• Johnson Space Center:JSC's General-Use Nodal Network Solver (GUNNS)

News Media Contact

Arielle Samuelson

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0307

arielle.a.samuelson@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-236

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NASA Awards Contracts for Exploration Mission-2 Support

NASA has awarded a new contract for Ground Support Equipment Fabrication to four awardees that will support the agency’s Exploration Mission-2 activities.

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NASA to Televise Two Spacewalks, Preview Briefing

Astronauts on the International Space Station will conduct spacewalks Friday, Oct. 19, and Thursday, Oct. 25, to continue power system upgrades, and experts will preview the work during a news conference Tuesday, Oct. 16, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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Painting Cars for Mars

NASA Study Connects Southern California, Mexico Faults

A multiyear study has uncovered evidence that a 21-mile-long (34-kilometer-long) section of a fault links known, longer faults in southern California and northern Mexico into a much longer continuous system. The entire system is at least 217 miles (350 kilometers) long.

Knowing how faults are connected helps scientists understand how stress transfers between faults. Ultimately, this helps researchers understand whether an earthquake on one section of a fault would rupture multiple fault sections, resulting in a much larger earthquake.

A team led by scientist Andrea Donnellan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, recognized that the south end of California's Elsinore fault is linked to the north end of the Laguna Salada fault system, just north of the international border with Mexico. The short length of the connecting fault segment, which they call the Ocotillo section, is consistent with an immature fault zone that is still developing, where repeated earthquakes have not yet created a smoother, single fault instead of several strands.

The Ocotillo section was the site of a magnitude 5.7 aftershock that ruptured on a 5-mile-long (8-kilometer-long) fault buried under the California desert two months after the 2010 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake caused severe damage in the Mexican city of Mexicali and was felt throughout Southern California. It and its aftershocks caused dozens of faults in the region -- including many not previously identified -- to move.

Seismic activity in the region is a sign of its complex geology. The Pacific and North American plates are grinding past each other in Southern California. In the Gulf of California, there's a spreading zone where plates are moving apart. "The plate boundary is still sorting itself out," Donnellan said.

Donnellan's team has been studying this region since 2009, using data from NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR). This sophisticated airborne instrument measures the ground level with extreme accuracy, allowing scientists to see how the ground has shifted between flights. The team also uses data from GPS stations in the region, which provide information on vertical motion of the ground. The study included team members from JPL, the University of California's Irvine and Davis campuses, and Indiana University.

In the new study, Donnellan's team was also able to better define where Earth's crust continued slipping or deforming following the El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake and where other factors are important. "The shaking is only part of the earthquake process," she said. "The Earth keeps on moving for years [after the shaking stops]. What's cool about UAVSAR and GPS is that you can see the rest of the process."

News Media Contact

Esprit Smith

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4269

Esprit.Smith@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA's Earth Science News Team

2018-233

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