NASA Astronaut Available for Satellite Interviews Before First Spaceflight

NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor will be available at 8 a.m. EDT Tuesday, May 15, for live satellite interviews one last time before she launches June 6 on her first spaceflight.

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Genes in Space Students to Speak with NASA Astronauts on Space Station

Students from Houston area schools who participated in the Genes in Space challenge, will talk to astronauts on the International Space Station during an events hosted by Boeing and Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The event is part of NASA’s Year of Education on Station.

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NASA Highlights Science on Next Orbital ATK Mission to Space Station

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday, May 10, to discuss select science investigations and technology demonstrations launching on the next Orbital ATK commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station.

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NASA's First Deep-Space CubeSats Say: 'Polo!'

NASA has received radio signals indicating that the first-ever CubeSats headed to deep space are alive and well. The first signal was received at 12:15 p.m. PST (3:15 p.m. EST) today; the second at 1:58 p.m. PST (4:58 p.m. EST). Engineers will now be performing a series of checks before both CubeSats enter their cruise to deep space.

Mars Cube One, or MarCO, is a pair of briefcase-sized spacecraft that launched along with NASA's InSight Mars lander at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT) today from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California. InSight is a scientific mission that will probe the Red Planet's deep interior for the first time; the name stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

The twin MarCO CubeSats are on their own separate mission: rather than collecting science, they will follow the InSight lander on its cruise to Mars, testing out miniature spacecraft technology along the way.

Both were programmed to unfold their solar panels soon after launch, followed by several opportunities to radio back their health.

"Both MarCO-A and B say 'Polo!' It's a sign that the little sats are alive and well," said Andy Klesh, chief engineer for the MarCO mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which built the twin spacecraft.

The computers inside each MarCO CubeSat haven't been turned on since being tested at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, in mid-March, where they were prepared for launch by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems of Irvine, California. Each spacecraft had to do a lot of things right by itself for the team to hear a signal: batteries had to retain enough charge for the spacecraft to deploy their solar arrays, stabilize their attitude, turn toward the Sun and turn on their radios.

A couple of weeks will be spent assessing how the MarCO CubeSats are performing. If they survive the radiation of space and function as planned, they'll fly over the Red Planet during InSight's entry, descent and landing in November. They each have a special antenna to relay InSight's vital signs during the infamous "Seven Minutes of Terror," the crucial phase which has claimed the majority of humanity's probes sent to land on the Red Planet.

CubeSats are a kind of boxy satellite invented to teach engineering students how to build spacecraft. Today, they offer access to space for private companies and research institutions. They're just one kind of "SmallSat," which includes a broad range organized by weight class. CubeSats are generally under 33 pounds (15 kilograms), and can weigh as little as about five pounds (2.5 kilograms). They're distinctively modular, which makes it easier to buy "plug-in" parts rather than custom-design every part of the spacecraft.

NASA is taking the opportunity to test several experimental systems with MarCO. Their radios, folding high-gain antennas, attitude control and propulsion systems are all included to prove new technologies in deep space.

"We're nervous but excited," said Joel Krajewski of JPL, MarCO's project manager. "A lot of work went into designing and testing these components so that they could survive the trip to Mars and relay data during InSight's landing. But our broader goal is to learn more about how to adapt CubeSat technologies for future deep-space missions."

When InSight arrives on Mars in November, it won't rely on MarCO for sending landing data back to Earth. That job will go to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as several Earth-based astronomy telescopes. But the MarCO mission could help prove the potential for CubeSats as a kind of bring-your-own "black box" for future NASA missions.

MarCO was built by JPL, which manages InSight and MarCO for NASA. It was funded by both JPL and NASA's Science Mission Directorate. A number of commercial suppliers provided unique technologies for MarCO. A full list, along with more information about the spacecraft, can be found here.

News Media Contact

Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-2433

andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

JoAnna Wendel

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1003

joanna.r.wendel@nasa.gov

2018-090

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NASA, ULA Launch Mission to Study How Mars Was Made

NASA's Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is on a 300-million-mile (483-million-kilometer) trip to Mars to study for the first time what lies deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet. InSight launched at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT) Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

"The United States continues to lead the way to Mars with this next exciting mission to study the Red Planet's core and geological processes," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "I want to congratulate all the teams from NASA and our international partners who made this accomplishment possible. As we continue to gain momentum in our work to send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars, missions like InSight are going to prove invaluable."

First reports indicate the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that carried InSight into space was seen as far south as Carlsbad, California, and as far east as Oracle, Arizona. One person recorded video of the launch from a private aircraft flying along the California coast.

Riding the Centaur second stage of the rocket, the spacecraft reached orbit 13 minutes and 16 seconds after launch. Sixty-one minutes later, the Centaur ignited a second time, sending InSight on a trajectory toward the Red Planet. InSight separated from the Centaur about 9 minutes later -- 93 minutes after launch -- and contacted the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network at 5:41 a.m. PDT (8:41 a.m. EDT).

"The Kennedy Space Center and ULA teams gave us a great ride today and started InSight on our six-and-a-half-month journey to Mars," said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "We've received positive indication the InSight spacecraft is in good health and we are all excited to be going to Mars once again to do groundbreaking science."

With its successful launch, NASA's InSight team now is focusing on the six-month voyage. During the cruise phase of the mission, engineers will check out the spacecraft's subsystems and science instruments, making sure its solar arrays and antenna are oriented properly, tracking its trajectory and performing maneuvers to keep it on course.

InSight is scheduled to land on the Red Planet around 3 p.m. EST (noon PST) Nov. 26, where it will conduct science operations until Nov. 24, 2020, which equates to one year and 40 days on Mars, or nearly two Earth years.

"Scientists have been dreaming about doing seismology on Mars for years. In my case, I had that dream 40 years ago as a graduate student, and now that shared dream has been lofted through the clouds and into reality," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL.

The InSight lander will probe and collect data on marsquakes, heat flow from the planet's interior and the way the planet wobbles, to help scientists understand what makes Mars tick and the processes that shaped the four rocky planets of our inner solar system.

"InSight will not only teach us about Mars, it will enhance our understanding of formation of other rocky worlds like Earth and the Moon, and thousands of planets around other stars," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. "InSight connects science and technology with a diverse team of JPL-led international and commercial partners."

Previous missions to Mars investigated the surface history of the Red Planet by examining features like canyons, volcanoes, rocks and soil, but no one has attempted to investigate the planet's earliest evolution, which can only be found by looking far below the surface.

"InSight will help us unlock the mysteries of Mars in a new way, by not just studying the surface of the planet, but by looking deep inside to help us learn about the earliest building blocks of the planet," said JPL Director Michael Watkins.

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for launch service acquisition, integration, analysis, and launch management. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is NASA's launch service provider.

A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, Germany. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument.

For more information about InSight, and to follow along on its flight to Mars, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/insight

News Media Contact

D.C. Agle / Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-5011

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

Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 358-1003

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

2018-089

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NASA, ULA Launch Mission to Study How Mars Was Made

NASA’s Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is on a 300-million-mile trip to Mars to study for the first time what lies deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet.

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NASA's First Mission to Study the Interior of Mars Awaits May 5 Launch

All systems are go for NASA's next launch to the Red Planet.

The early-morning liftoff on Saturday of the Mars InSight lander will mark the first time in history an interplanetary launch will originate from the West Coast. InSight will launch from the U.S. Air Force Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 3E. The two-hour launch window will open on May 5 at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT).

InSight, for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will launch aboard aUnited Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all rocky planets formed, including Earth and its Moon. The lander's instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes, and a probe that will monitor the flow of heat from the planet's interior.

The ULA rocket will carry the spacecraft over the Channel Islands just off the California Coast and continue climbing out over the Pacific, shadowing the coastline south beyond Baja California. InSight's Atlas will reach orbit about 13 minutes after launch, when the rocket is about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) northwest of Isabella Island, Ecuador.

"For those Southern Californians who are interested in rockets or space exploration, or have insomnia, we hope to put on a great show this Saturday," said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "But for those who want to sleep in on Saturday, there will be another opportunity to engage with this historic mission. We will be landing on Mars in the western Elysium Planitia region on Monday, Nov. 26, around noon Pacific time. You will be able to watch a live stream of this landing while working on your holiday shopping."

Getting a Mars mission flying requires a great many milestones. Among those still to come are the official start of the countdown to launch -- which comes on Friday, May 4 at 10:14 a.m. PDT (Saturday, May 5, 1:14 a.m. EDT). A little over an hour later, at about 11:30 p.m. PDT (May 5, 2:30 a.m. EDT), the 260-foot-tall (80-meter) Mobile Service Tower -- a structure that has been protecting the Atlas V launch vehicle and its InSight payload during their vertical assembly -- will begin a 20-minute long, 250-foot (about 80-meter) roll away from the Atlas. Four hours and 25 minutes later, the launch window will open.

"I've been to several rocket launches, but it is a whole different vibe when there is something you've been working on for years sitting in the nose cone waiting to get hurled beyond our atmosphere," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL. "But as exciting as launch day will be, it's just a first step in a journey that should tell us not only why Mars formed the way it did, but how planets take shape in general."

InSight's launch period is May 5 through June 8, 2018, with multiple launch opportunities over windows of approximately two hours each date. Launch opportunities are set five minutes apart during each date's window.Whichever date the launch occurs, InSight's landing on Mars is planned for Nov. 26, 2018, around noon PST (3 p.m. EST).

JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida provides launch management. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is NASA's launch service provider of the Atlas 5 rocket. A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission.In particular, CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar Systems Research (MPS). DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument.

For more information about InSight, visit:

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

Live televised coverage of the launch will be available at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

For information on viewing the launch in person, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/mission/timeline/launch/watch-in-person/

News Media Contact

D.C. Agle / Andrew Good

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-393-9011/393-2433

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

Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726 / 358-1003

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

2018-088

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GRACE-FO: Cracking a Cold Case

Mission To Study How Melting Polar Ice Affects Regional Sea Levels

Reports of the rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet often refer to how much the melting could add to global sea levels -- as if meltwater raises the ocean evenly, like a sink filling up. The reality is far different. Water from West Antarctica will end up raising sea levels more in Los Angeles and Miami than in Rio de Janeiro, for example, even though Brazil is thousands of miles closer to Antarctica than the United States.

How do we know? Scientists first observed this ocean pattern using data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, which ended last October after 15 years of operation. When the NASA/German Research Centre for Geosciences GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California next month, it will take up the job of monitoring melting polar ice. That will give scientists a renewed opportunity to understand some of the many processes that lead to different rates of sea level rise on different coastlines. Since runoff from melting ice sheets and glaciers currently accounts for about two-thirds of global sea level rise, understanding these melt-related processes is a critical piece of understanding sea level change at a regional scale.

Fingerprints of Water

The gravitational pull of an ice sheet attracts seawater from the nearby oceans and causes it to pile up along the coastlines. When the ice sheet melts and loses mass, the gravitational pull is reduced, causing the sea level nearby to fall. At the same time, the additional meltwater in the ocean causes sea level rise -- but it rises farther away from the melt source. The falling sea level near the ice sheet and rising sea level farther away are connected like the rising and falling ends of a seesaw. Since every ice sheet and glacier has a unique location and size, each one creates a different seesawing pattern, as individual as a fingerprint.

Scientists had theorized that these fingerprint patterns existed, but only observationally detected them for the first time in September 2017 using GRACE data.

The fingerprints from Greenland and Antarctica reach across the equator, so that low- and mid-latitude land masses are affected by melting from both regions. These coastlines may be affected more strongly by the ice loss in the opposite hemisphere. New York City, for example, experiences slightly more sea level rise from ice melt in Antarctica than from Greenland. Or for an extreme example, Greenland's ice loss is currently estimated to contribute 12 times as much to sea level rise in Cape Town, South Africa, than it is to rising seas in London, even though London is 8,000 miles closer to Greenland.

How GRACE-FO Works

GRACE-FO, like GRACE, is designed to measure monthly changes in gravitational pull that result from changes in the mass on Earth below the orbiting satellites. More than 99 percent of Earth's mean gravitational pull does not change from one month to the next, because it is due to the solid Earth itself -- its surface and interior. Water, however, moves continuously nearly everywhere: rain falls, ocean currents flow, ice melts and so on. As the twin GRACE-FO satellites orbit Earth, one closely following the other, these moving masses alter the gravitational pull below the two satellites, changing the distance between them very slightly. The record of these changes is analyzed to create monthly maps of the variations and redistribution of Earth's mass near the surface.

Imprints Below Earth's Surface

Another effect of the changing mass from melting ice involves not just recent ice loss but the continental-scale melt-off that ended about 6,000 years ago. That ancient event still has repercussions for sea levels on today's coastlines.

Frank Webb of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the project scientist for GRACE-FO, used the analogy of memory foam to describe this effect. "When you lie on a memory foam bed, you sink into it. When you get up, it rebounds, slowly. There may be a slight bulge around where you were lying." In the same way, an ice sheet presses on Earth's viscous mantle layer, about 50 miles below the surface. Over millennia, the heavy ice pushes the surface layer down into the mantle, and mantle material bulges out elsewhere. When an ice sheet melts, the mantle flows back in the reverse direction, in a process that plays out for millennia after the ice has disappeared.

The North American tectonic plate is still rebounding from the loss of mass at the end of the last ice age. At that time, today's Canada and Greenland were buried beneath thick ice while most of what is now the United States remained ice free. The mantle flowed away from under Canada and bulged under the United States. Today, as the flow moves in the opposite direction, the U.S. side of the North American plate is sinking very slowly, and Canada is rising.

Even if there were no other changes occurring in today's oceans, these up-and-down movements of the solid Earth would cause sea levels to change on today's U.S. East Coast. As it is, they add to or counteract other influences on sea level.

The Bottom Line

Since the original GRACE mission launched in 2002, its measurements have shown that Greenland has been losing about 280 gigatons of ice per year on average, and Antarctic losses are at a rate of almost 120 gigatons per year. (One gigaton of water would fill about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.) The data also showed that the rate of loss accelerated from 2003 to 2013 by about 25 gigatons per year every year in Greenland, and 11 gigatons per year every year in Antarctica. While considerable uncertainties remain, the measurements from GRACE over the past 15 years leave scientists and planners concerned that sea level rise will be measured in feet rather than inches by the end of the century.

Combined, these other effects from gravitational changes as ice melts in Greenland and Antarctica can add or subtract 25 to 50 percent of a regional change in sea level caused by melting ice alone.

Questions remain about all of these processes. For example, how much natural variation is there in the rate of ice loss that we are currently observing? How does ice loss in some regions interact with natural climate patterns such as El Niño? While 15 years of high-quality, global and nearly uninterrupted data from GRACE have already produced a plethora of discoveries, the longer data record from GRACE-FO is essential to tease out the signal of long-term climate evolution from shorter-term effects of these recurring climate patterns.

GRACE-FO is scheduled to launch on May 19. For more information, see:

http://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/grace-fo

News Media Contact

Alan Buis

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-354-0474

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA's Earth Science News Team

2018-087

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NASA to Preview Pair of Upcoming US Spacewalks, Provide Live Coverage

Two NASA astronauts are scheduled to venture outside the International Space Station for a pair of six-and-a-half-hour spacewalks May 16 and 30.

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Demonstration Proves Nuclear Fission System Can Provide Space Exploration Power

NASA and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have successfully demonstrated a new nuclear reactor power system that could enable long-duration crewed missions to the Moon, Mars and destinations beyond.

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Vice President Pence Visits JPL, Previews NASA's Next Mars Mission Launch

A week before NASA launches its next mission to Mars, Vice President Mike Pence toured on Saturday, April 28, the birthplace of numerous past, present and future space missions at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The afternoon visit by the Vice President, his wife, Karen, and daughter Charlotte, included a stop in JPL's Mission Control, where engineers will communicate with NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight). The Mars lander is scheduled to launch Saturday, May 5, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. InSight will be the first interplanetary mission ever to launch from the West Coast, and is the first-ever mission to study the interior of Mars.

The Mission Control building, a National Historic Landmark, has served as a hub for communications with countless spacecraft since 1964, including some of NASA's Apollo Moon missions, the twin Voyager spacecraft at the edge of our solar system, and the Cassini mission to Saturn. From here, Charlotte Pence had an opportunity to send commands giving the Mars Curiosity rover a day's worth of science activities. The signal took about seven minutes to travel the 80 million miles to reach Curiosity, which has been roaming the Red Planet for almost six years.

"We were honored to show the Vice President, who has a strong commitment to space exploration, some of our special sites and space missions," said JPL Director Michael Watkins. "With JPL's rich history, which includes designing and building America's first satellite for launch in 1958, and with our cutting-edge scientific capabilities, we stand ready to advance exploration as we move forward into our revitalized space age."

The tour included a stop at the JPL Mars Yard, an outdoor test facility that simulates the Martian landscape. There, the Pence family tried their hands at maneuvering a test Mars rover. They also visited the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where the Mars 2020 mission hardware is being assembled. Mars 2020 will search for signs of habitability in Mars' ancient past and signs of past microbial life.

The Vice President, who chairs the National Space Council, was accompanied on the tour by Watkins, JPL Deputy Director Larry James, Mars Exploration Program Director Fuk Li, Caltech President Thomas Rosenbaum, National Space Council Executive Secretary Scott Pace, and Jim Ellis, chair of the NASA Space Council Users Advisory Group. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Video and still images of the visit are available at:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmeYAZF5

and

https://go.nasa.gov/2HFoJEt

For more information about NASA's Mars program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mars

News Media Contact

Veronica McGregor / Jane Platt

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-9452 / 354-0880

veronica.c.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov

2018-086

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