50 million cosmic rays over the frozen icy continent of Antarctica

2013 February 5

NASA'S SUPER-TIGER BALLOON BREAKS RECORDS WHILE COLLECTING DATA

WASHINGTON -- A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight
duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument
that detected 50 million cosmic rays.

The Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (Super-TIGER) balloon
launched at 3:45 p.m. EST, Dec. 8 from the Long Duration Balloon site
near McMurdo Station. It spent 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes aloft
at 127,000 feet, more than four times the altitude of most commercial
airliners, and was brought down to end the mission on Friday.
Washington University of St. Louis managed the mission.

On Jan. 24, the Super-TIGER team broke the record for longest flight
by a balloon of its size, flying for 46 days. The team broke another
record Friday after landing by becoming the longest flight of any
heavy-lift scientific balloon, including NASA's Long Duration
Balloons. The previous record was set in 2009 by NASA's Super
Pressure Balloon test flight at 54 days, 1 hour, and 29 minutes.

"Scientific balloons give scientists the ability to gather critical
science data for a long duration at a very low relative cost," said
Vernon Jones, NASA's Balloon Program Scientist.

Super-TIGER flew a new instrument for measuring rare elements heavier
than iron among the flux of high-energy cosmic rays bombarding Earth
from elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy. The information retrieved
from this mission will be used to understand where these energetic
atomic nuclei are produced and how they achieve their very high
energies.

The balloon gathered so much data it will take scientists about two
years to analyze it fully.

"This has been a very successful flight because of the long duration,
which allowed us to detect large numbers of cosmic rays," said Dr.
Bob Binns, principal investigator of the Super-TIGER mission. "The
instrument functioned very well."

The balloon was able to stay aloft as long as it did because of
prevailing wind patterns at the South Pole. The launch site takes
advantage of anticyclonic, or counter-clockwise, winds circulating
from east to west in the stratosphere there. This circulation and the
sparse population work together to enable long-duration balloon
flights at altitudes above 100,000 feet.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs manages
the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S.
scientific operations in Antarctica. NSF's Antarctic support
contractor supports the launch and recovery operations for NASA's
Balloon Program in Antarctica. Mission data were downloaded using
NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System.

Star Vega: This second brightest star in northern night skies too has an asteroid belt around it

2013

NASA, ESA TELESCOPES FIND EVIDENCE FOR ASTEROID BELT AROUND VEGA

WASHINGTON -- Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a large
asteroid belt around the star Vega, the second brightest star in
northern night skies. The scientists used data from NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space
Observatory, in which NASA plays an important role.

The discovery of an asteroid belt-like band of debris around Vega
makes the star similar to another observed star called Fomalhaut. The
data are consistent with both stars having inner, warm belts and
outer, cool belts separated by a gap. This architecture is similar to
the asteroid and Kuiper belts in our own solar system.

What is maintaining the gap between the warm and cool belts around
Vega and Fomalhaut? The results strongly suggest the answer is
multiple planets. Our solar system's asteroid belt, which lies
between Mars and Jupiter, is maintained by the gravity of the
terrestrial planets and the giant planets, and the outer Kuiper belt
is sculpted by the giant planets.

"Our findings echo recent results showing multiple-planet systems are
common beyond our sun," said Kate Su, an astronomer at the Steward
Observatory at the University of Arizona. Su presented the results
Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach,
Calif., and is lead author of a paper on the findings accepted for
publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

Vega and Fomalhaut are similar in other ways. Both are about twice the
mass of our sun and burn a hotter, bluer color in visible light. Both
stars are relatively nearby at about 25 light-years away. The stars
are thought to be around 400 million years old, but Vega could be
closer to its 600 millionth birthday. Fomalhaut has a single
candidate planet orbiting it, Fomalhaut b, which orbits at the inner
edge of its cometary belt.

The Herschel and Spitzer telescopes detected infrared light emitted by
warm and cold dust in discrete bands around Vega and Fomalhaut,
discovering the new asteroid belt around Vega and confirming the
existence of the other belts around both stars. Comets and the
collisions of rocky chunks replenish the dust in these bands. The
inner belts in these systems cannot be seen in visible light because
the glare of their stars outshines them.

Both the inner and outer belts contain far more material than our own
asteroid and Kuiper belts. The reason is twofold: the star systems
are far younger than our own, which has had hundreds of millions more
years to clean house, and the systems likely formed from an initially
more massive cloud of gas and dust than our solar system.

The gap between the inner and outer debris belts for Vega and
Fomalhaut also proportionally corresponds to the distance between our
sun's asteroid and Kuiper belts. This distance works out to a ratio
of about 1:10, with the outer belt 10 times farther away from its
host star than the inner belt. As for the large gap between the two
belts, it is likely there are several undetected planets,
Jupiter-sized or smaller, creating a dust-free zone between the two
belts. A good comparison star system is HR 8799, which has four known
planets that sweep up the space between two similar disks of debris.

"Overall, the large gap between the warm and the cold belts is a
signpost that points to multiple planets likely orbiting around Vega
and Fomalhaut," said Su.

If unseen planets do in fact orbit Vega and Fomalhaut, these bodies
will not likely stay hidden.

"Upcoming new facilities such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope
should be able to find the planets," said paper co-author Karl
Stapelfeldt, chief of the Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics
Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

All about the Red Planet Mars: Yet another meteorite contains water

2013

RESEARCHERS IDENTIFY WATER RICH METEORITE LINKED TO MARS CRUST

WASHINGTON -- NASA-funded researchers analyzing a small meteorite that
may be the first discovered from the Martian surface or crust have
found it contains 10 times more water than other Martian meteorites
from unknown origins.

This new class of meteorite was found in 2011 in the Sahara Desert.
Designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, and nicknamed "Black Beauty,"
it weighs approximately 11 ounces (320 grams). After more than a year
of intensive study, a team of U.S. scientists determined the
meteorite formed 2.1 billion years ago during the beginning of the
most recent geologic period on Mars, known as the Amazonian.

"The age of NWA 7034 is important because it is significantly older
than most other Martian meteorites," said Mitch Schulte, program
scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "We now have insight into a piece of Mars' history at a
critical time in its evolution."

The meteorite is an excellent match for surface rocks and outcrops
NASA has studied remotely via Mars rovers and Mars-orbiting
satellites. NWA 7034's composition is different from any previously
studied Martian meteorite. The research is published in Thursday's
edition of Science Express.

"The contents of this meteorite may challenge many long held notions
about Martian geology," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator
for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "These findings
also present an important reference frame for the Curiosity rover as
it searches for reduced organics in the minerals exposed in the
bedrock of Gale Crater."

NWA 7034 is made of cemented fragments of basalt, rock that forms from
rapidly cooled lava. The fragments are primarily feldspar and
pyroxene, most likely from volcanic activity. This unusual
meteorite's chemistry matches that of the Martian crust as measured
by NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Odyssey Orbiter.

"This Martian meteorite has everything in its composition that you'd
want in order to further our understanding of the Red Planet," said
Carl Agee, leader of the analysis team and director and curator at
the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics in
Albuquerque. "This unique meteorite tells us what volcanism was like
on Mars 2 billion years ago. It also gives us a glimpse of ancient
surface and environmental conditions on Mars that no other meteorite
has ever offered."

The research team included groups at the University of California at
San Diego and the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Experiments
were conducted to analyze mineral and chemical composition, age, and
water content.

Researchers theorize the large amount of water contained in NWA 7034
may have originated from interaction of the rocks with water present
in Mars' crust. The meteorite also has a different mixture of oxygen
isotopes than has been found in other Martian meteorites, which could
have resulted from interaction with the Martian atmosphere.

Most Martian meteorites are divided into three rock types, named after
three meteorites; Shergotty, Nakhla, and Chassigny. These "SNC"
meteorites currently number about 110. Their point of origin on Mars
is not known and recent data from lander and orbiter missions suggest
they are a mismatch for the Martian crust. Although NWA 7034 has
similarities to the SNC meteorites, including the presence of
macromolecular organic carbon, this new meteorite has many unique
characteristics.

"The texture of the NWA meteorite is not like any of the SNC
meteorites," said co-author Andrew Steele, who led the carbon
analysis at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory. "This
is an exciting measurement in Mars and planetary science. We now have
more context than ever before to understanding where they may come
from."

The research was funded by NASA's Cosmochemistry Program and
Astrobiology Institute, part of the Planetary Science Division in the
Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. The research also
was supported by the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium in Las Cruces,
and the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.

Saturn's transit of Venus: View from the Saturn of Venus transit - a lovely celestial feast

Saturn's Transit of Venus on Dec. 21, 2012

A transit of Venus seen from Earth on June 6, 2012. Photo credit: Bum-Suk Yeom of Daejeon, South Korea

Dec. 20, 2012: Last June, astronomers urged sky watchers to observe the transit of Venus. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, they said. The black disk of the second planet wouldn't crawl across the face of the sun again for more than 100 years.

In fact, it's happening again this week--not on Earth, but Saturn, according to a NASA release.

"On Friday, Dec. 21st, there will be a transit of Venus visible from Saturn, and we will be watching it using the Cassini spacecraft," says Phil Nicholson, a Cassini science team member from Cornell University. "This will be the first time a transit of Venus has been observed from deep space."

Because Saturn is 10 times farther from the sun than Earth, this transit of Venus won't be so easy to see. The silhouette of the second planet will be just a tiny black speck on the shrunken disk of a sun 10 times farther from Saturn than Earth. Cassini won't be beaming back any "beauty shots." Nevertheless, the spacecraft will be conducting potentially ground-breaking science.

"As Venus crosses the face of the sun, we will see if we can detect chemical compounds in the planet's atmosphere by looking at the spectrum of sunlight filtered by Venus," explains Nicholson.

This is, essentially, an experiment in exoplanet studies. NASA's Kepler spacecraft routinely discovers new planets around distant stars by looking for the minuscule reduction in starlight that occurs during a planetary transit. Watching Venus transit the sun from the faraway orbit of Saturn is a good analog.

"We already know what Venus's atmosphere is made of," says Nicholson. "But this will give us a chance to see if we can pull this information out of a faint, distant planetary transit."

The research team will be using Cassini's VIMS instrument. VIMS is an infrared spectrometer designed to tease out the chemical composition of Saturn and its moons. It isn't designed for planetary transits, but with a little ingenuity Nicholson and colleagues have figured out how to gather useful data.
"VIMS has a heavily-filtered 'solar port' 20 degrees off the main axis of the spectrometer. We use it to occasionally observe the sun for calibration purposes--or to watch the sun set in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon's Titan," says Nicholson. "On Dec. 21st we'll be using the solar port to monitor the transit of Venus."

The images won't be very impressive. Only a few pixels will fit across the entire solar disk. But the researchers aren't looking for images. "We want spectra," says Nicholson. "Carbon dioxide, the main constituent of Venus's atmosphere, has several absorption bands squarely inside our 1 to 5 micron observing window."

VIMS will gather data for the entire 9 hours of the transit--as well as many hours before and after for comparison. "Even with so much observing time, we still might not detect any chemical signatures," cautions Nicholson. "The signals are going to be faint--only a few parts in a million--so this is an extremely difficult observation."

Nevertheless, Nicholson is looking forward to Friday. "While most people have to wait a hundred years for the next transit of Venus, we get to experience one right away. And if we make any discoveries at the same time... so much the better."

Unravelling the mysteries of the Universe: Have we found yet another earth in our vicinity?

Another Earth Just 12 Light-Years Away?

by Ken Croswell
18 December 2012

Astronomers have discovered what may be five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, the closest single star beyond our solar system whose temperature and luminosity nearly match the sun's. If the planets are there, one of them is about the right distance from the star to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life. Don't pack your bags just yet, though: The discovery still needs to be confirmed.

Tau Ceti is only 12 light-years from Earth, just three times as far as our sun's nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Tau Ceti resembles the sun so much that astronomer Frank Drake, who has long sought radio signals from possible extraterrestrial civilizations, made it his first target back in 1960. Unlike most stars, which are faint, cool, and small, Tau Ceti is a bright G-type yellow main-sequence star like the sun, a trait that only one in 25 stars boasts. Moreover, unlike Alpha Centauri, which also harbors a G-type star and even a planet, Tau Ceti is single, so there's no second star in the system whose gravity could yank planets away, reports Science.

Astronomer Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom and his colleagues analyzed more than 6000 observations of Tau Ceti from telescopes in Chile, Australia, and Hawaii. As the researchers will report in Astronomy & Astrophysics, slight changes in Tau Ceti's motion through space suggest that the star may be responding to gravitational tugs from five planets that are only about two to seven times as massive as Earth.

If that's right, all five planets lie closer to their star than Mars does to ours; however, Tau Ceti emits only 45% as much light as the sun, so each planet receives less warmth than a planet would at the same distance from our sun. Tau Ceti's three innermost planets—designated b, c, and d—are probably too hot to support life, being so close to the star that they require only 14, 35, and 94 days to complete an orbit. The farthest of the three, d, is about as close to Tau Ceti as Mercury is to the sun.
It's the fourth planet—planet e—that the scientists suggest might be another life-bearing world, even though it's about four times as massive as Earth. If you lived there, you'd see a yellow sun in the sky, but your year would last just 168 days. That's because Tau Ceti e lies somewhat closer to its star than Venus does to the sun and thus revolves faster than Earth. The fifth and outermost planet, designated Tau Ceti f, completes an orbit every 640 days and is slightly closer to its star than Mars is to the sun.

However, Tuomi's team warns that disturbances on the star itself, rather than orbiting planets, may be producing the small velocity changes in Tau Ceti. "They're really digging deep into the noise here," says Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not part of the team. "The [astronomical] community is going to find it hard to accept planet discoveries from signals so deeply embedded in noise."

"They're pushing the envelope," says Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Some or even many of these planets could go away. But I think that they've done absolutely the best job that you can do, given the data." Laughlin says it's frustrating that the most interesting planets—small ones like Earth—are so challenging to detect: "You have to get tons and tons and tons of velocity measurements over many years, and then you really, really have to take extreme care—as this Tuomi et al. paper does—to get rid of all the systematic noise."

Team member Chris Tinney, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, acknowledges the problem. "It's certainly very tantalizing evidence for potentially a very exciting planetary system," Tinney says, but he adds that verifying the discovery may take 10 years, and the scientists didn't want to wait that long. "We felt that the best thing to do was to put the result out there and see if somebody can either independently confirm it or shoot it down."

If the planets exist, they orbit a star that's about twice as old as our own, so a suitable planet has had plenty of time to develop life much more advanced than Homo sapiens. That may just explain why no one from Tau Ceti has ever contacted beings as primitive as us.

Astronaut Sally Ride: New lunar impact site gets a name

Lunar Impact Site Named After Sally Ride

Dec. 18, 2012: NASA has named the site where twin gravity probes hit the Moon yesterday in honor of the late astronaut, Sally K. Ride, who was America's first woman in space and a member of the probes' mission team.

On Dec. 14th, Ebb and Flow, the two spacecraft of NASA's GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) mission, were commanded to descend into a lower orbit and target a mountain near the Moon's north pole. The formation-flying duo hit the lunar surface as planned at 5:28:51 p.m. EST and 5:29:21 p.m. EST on Dec. 17th at a speed of 3,760 mph. The location of the Sally K. Ride Impact Site is on the southern face of an approximately 1.5 mile-tall mountain near a crater named Goldschmidt.

"Sally Ride worked tirelessly throughout her life to remind all of us, especially girls, to keep questioning and learning," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. "Today her passion for making students part of NASA's science is honored by naming the impact site for her."

The final flight plan for NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft ends with an impact at a mountain near the lunar north pole. The impact site is named for America’s first woman in space, Dr. Sally Ride, whose education and public outreach program lead the GRAIL mission’s MoonKAM effort. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/ASU /Sally Ride Science

The impact marked a successful end to the GRAIL mission, which was NASA's first planetary mission to carry cameras fully dedicated to education and public outreach. Ride, who died in July after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, led GRAIL's MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students) Program through her company, Sally Ride Science, in San Diego.

Along with its primary science instrument, each spacecraft carried a MoonKAM camera that took more than 115,000 total images of the lunar surface. Imaging targets were proposed by middle school students from across the country and the resulting images returned for them to study. The names of the spacecraft were selected by Ride and the mission team from student submissions in a nationwide contest.

"Sally was all about getting the job done, whether it be in exploring space, inspiring the next generation, or helping make the GRAIL mission the resounding success it is today," said GRAIL principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We are proud we can honor Sally Ride's contributions by naming this corner of the Moon after her."

Fifty minutes prior to impact, the spacecraft fired their engines until the propellant was depleted. The maneuver was designed to determine precisely the amount of fuel remaining in the tanks. This will help NASA engineers validate computer models to improve predictions of fuel needs for future missions.

"Ebb fired its engines for 4 minutes, 3 seconds and Flow fired its for 5 minutes, 7 seconds," said GRAIL project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "It was one final important set of data from a mission that was filled with great science and engineering data."

The mission team deduced that much each spacecraft was broken up during the impacts. Most of what remains probably is buried in shallow craters. The craters' size may be determined when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter returns images of the area in several weeks.

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow had been orbiting the moon since Jan. 1, 2012. The probes intentionally were sent into the lunar surface because they did not have sufficient altitude or fuel to continue science operations. Their successful prime and extended science missions generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

"We will miss our lunar twins, but the scientists tell me it will take years to analyze all the great data they got, and that is why we came to the moon in the first place," Lehman said. "So long, Ebb and Flow, and we thank you."

Studying the gravitational field on the moon: Probe lands on Moon's north pole

Dec. 13, 2012: A pair of NASA spacecraft that have been studying the Moon's gravitational field are being prepared for a controlled descent into a mountain near the Moon's north pole. Impact is expected at about 2:28 p.m. PST (5:28 p.m. EST) on Monday, Dec. 17.

"It is going to be difficult to say goodbye to our little robotic twins," says MIT professor Maria Zuber, principal investigator of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. "Planetary science has advanced in a major way because of their contributions."

The two probes, named Ebb and Flow, are being sent purposely into the lunar surface because their low orbit and low fuel levels preclude further scientific operations.

Ebb and Flow's successful mission to the Moon has yielded the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding not only of the Moon, but also of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

The spacecraft have been flying in formation around the Moon since Jan. 1, 2012. They were named by elementary school students in Bozeman, Mont., who won a contest.

Ebb and Flow will conduct one final experiment before their mission ends. They will fire their main engines until their propellant tanks are empty to determine precisely the amount of fuel remaining in their tanks. This will help NASA engineers validate fuel consumption computer models to improve predictions of fuel needs for future missions.The first probe to reach the Moon, Ebb, also will be the first to go down, at 2:28:40 p.m. PST. Flow will follow Ebb about 20 seconds later. Both spacecraft will hit the surface at 3,760 mph (1.7 kilometers per second). No imagery of the impact is expected because the region will be in shadow at the time. The impact site is located near a crater named Goldschmidt.

"Our lunar twins may be in the twilight of their operational lives, but one thing is for sure, they are going down swinging," said GRAIL project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Even during the last half of their last orbit, we are going to do an engineering experiment that could help future missions operate more efficiently."

Because the exact amount of fuel remaining aboard each spacecraft is unknown, mission navigators and engineers designed the depletion burn to allow the probes to descend gradually for several hours and skim the surface of the moon until the elevated terrain of the target mountain gets in their way.

The burn that will change the spacecrafts' orbit is scheduled to take place Friday morning, Dec. 14.

"Such a unique end-of-mission scenario requires extensive and detailed mission planning and navigation," said Lehman. "We've had our share of challenges during this mission and always come through in flying colors, but nobody I know around here has ever flown into a Moon mountain before. It'll be a first for us, that's for sure."

Unraveling the mysteries of the binary stars: NASA astrobiology institute finds the secrets

December 2012

NASA ASTROBIOLOGY INSTITUTE SHOWS HOW WIDE BINARY STARS FORM

WASHINGTON -- Using computer simulations, scientists from the NASA
Astrobiology Institute team at the University of Hawaii are shedding
light on a question that has challenged astronomers for years: What
causes wide binary stars?

Binary stars are pairs of stars that orbit each other. Wide binary
stars are separated by as much as one light-year in their orbits,
farther apart than some stellar nurseries are wide. Astronomers have
known about such distant pairs for a long time but have not
understood how they form.

Researchers simulated the complex motions of newborn triple stars
still embedded in their nascent cloud cores. They studied the motions
180,000 times and concluded the widest binary systems began as three
stars, not just two. This research appears in a paper to be published
in the Dec. 13 issue of the journal Nature and was released last week
online.

Most stars are born in small, compact systems with two or more stars
at the center of a cloud core. When more than two stars share a small
space, they gravitationally pull on each other in a chaotic dance.
The least massive star often is kicked to the outskirts of the cloud
core while the remaining stars grow larger and closer by feeding on
the dense gas at the center of the cloud core.

If the force of the kick is not forecful enough, the runt star will
not escape, but instead begin a very wide orbit of the other two,
creating a wide binary. However, sometimes astronomers find only two
stars in a wide binary. This means either the star system formed
differently or something happened to one of the original binary pair.


"What may have happened is that the stars in the close binary merged
into a single larger star," said the paper's lead author, Bo Reipurth
of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
"This can happen if there is enough gas in the cloud core to provide
resistance to their motion. As the two stars in the close binary move
around each other surrounded by gas, they lose energy and spiral
toward each other. Sometimes there is so much gas in the core that
the two close stars spiral all the way in and collide with each other
in a spectacular merging explosion."

The wide binary nearest to Earth is Alpha Centauri. The star itself is
a close binary. Alpha Centauri has a small companion, Proxima
Centauri, which orbits at a distance of about one-quarter of a
light-year, or 15,000 times the distance between Earth and the sun.
All three stars were born close together several billion years ago,
before a powerful dynamic kick sent Proxima out into its wide path,
where it has been orbiting ever since.

NASA's Kepler mission already has proven that more than one planet can
form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star, a testament
to the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.

NASA supported the University of Hawaii work through a cooperative
agreement with NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.,
and the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which is a partnership between
NASA, 15 U.S. teams, and 10 international consortia. The research on
wide binary stars included the University of Turku in Finland.

What makes the interstellar matter, the matter present among stars

2012

IBEX SPACECRAFT REVEALS NEW OBSERVATIONS OF INTERSTELLAR MATTER

NASA announced in January its Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)
spacecraft captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what
lies beyond the solar system -- observations that show our solar
system is different than the space right outside it. The new
measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed,
the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of
other stars in the Milky Way.

The spacecraft observed four separate types of atoms, including
hydrogen, oxygen, neon and helium. These interstellar atoms are the
byproducts of older stars, which spread across the galaxy and fill
the vast space between stars. IBEX determined the distribution of
these elements outside the solar system that are flowing charged and
neutral particles, which blow through the galaxy.

IBEX also measured the interstellar wind traveling at a slower speed
than previously measured by the Ulysses spacecraft, and from a
different direction. The improved measurements from IBEX show a 20
percent difference in how much pressure the interstellar wind exerts
on our heliosphere. Measuring the pressure on our heliosphere from
the material in the galaxy and from the magnetic fields out there
will help determine the size and shape of our solar system as it
travels through the galaxy.

Ice on Mercury: Places on the Mercury that never see the sunlight

2012

SPACECRAFT FINDS NEW EVIDENCE FOR ICE ON MERCURY

NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging
(MESSENGER) spacecraft provided compelling support for the long-held
hypothesis the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen
volatile materials within its permanently shadowed polar craters.

The spacecraft's onboard instruments have been studying Mercury in
unprecedented detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011.
Scientists are seeing clearly for the first time a chapter in the
story of how the inner planets, including Earth, acquired their water
and some of the chemical building blocks for life.

The new data announced in December indicated the water ice in
Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of
Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick. Given its
proximity to the sun, Mercury would seem to be an unlikely place to
find ice, however, there are pockets at the planet's poles that never
see sunlight.

Taking census of the galaxies: How big is our universe and its realms

2012

NASA'S HUBBLE PROVIDES FIRST CENSUS OF GALAXIES NEAR COSMIC DAWN

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers announced Dec. 12
they have seen further back in time than ever before and have
uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies
that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was
less than 3 percent of its present age. The deepest images to date
from Hubble yield the first statistically robust sample of galaxies
that tells how abundant they were close to the era when galaxies
first formed.

The greater depth of the new Hubble images, together with a carefully
designed survey strategy, allows this work to go further than
previous studies, thereby providing what researchers say is the first
reliable galaxy census of this epoch. Notably, one of the galaxies
may be a distance record breaker, observed 380 million years after
the birth of our universe in the theorized big bang.

Looking deeper into the universe also means peering further back in
time. The universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old. The
newly discovered galaxies are seen as they looked 350 to 600 million
years after the big bang. Their light is just arriving at Earth now.

Revealing the secrets of the Red Planet: Now car-size rover beside Martian mountain

Undertaking the most complex landing ever attempted in planetary
exploration, NASA successfully placed the most advanced robotic rover
on Mars. The Mars Science Laboratory mission carrying the one-ton
rover named Curiosity, touched down in August. Almost immediately,
Curiosity sent back pictures of its landing site at Gale Crater with
the eventual destination of Mount Sharp in the background. Since
then, Curiosity has checked out its 10 science instruments, sent back
detailed photos and weather observations and "tasted" Martian soil.

Key mission findings during the first three months after the landing
include conglomerate rocks bearing rounded pebbles as evidence of
vigorous ancient stream flow right in the area where Curiosity
landed; mineral composition of Martian soil similar to soils in
Hawaii that contain volcanic glass; and the first assessment of the
natural radiation environment that future astronauts will encounter
on the surface of Mars.

Curiosity's planned two-year prime mission will be to explore and
assess a local region on the surface of Mars as a potential habitat
for life, past or present. In addition, the landing technology for
putting such a large payload safely on the Martian surface could help
with plans for future human Mars missions.

On Dec. 4, 2012 NASA announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program,
including a new robotic science rover based on the Curiosity design
set to launch in 2020.

The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity
and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one
European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the
Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the
Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic
Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which
will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and
participation in ESA's 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including
providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 mission
and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the
2018 ExoMars rover. With InSight, there will be a total of seven NASA
missions operating or being planned to study and explore our
Earth-like neighbor.

The 2020 mission will constitute another step toward being responsive
to high-priority science goals and the president's challenge of
sending humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s.

Measuring the gravity on the moon: And now gravity field map of the moon, the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body

NASA TWIN SPACECRAFT CREATE MOST ACCURATE GRAVITY MAP OF MOON

WASHINGTON -- Twin NASA probes orbiting the moon have generated the
highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.

The new map, created by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory
(GRAIL) mission, is allowing scientists to learn about the moon's
internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. Data from
the two washing machine-sized spacecraft also will provide a better
understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar
system formed and evolved.

The gravity field map reveals an abundance of features never before
seen in detail, such as tectonic structures, volcanic landforms,
basin rings, crater central peaks, and numerous simple, bowl-shaped
craters. Data also show the moon's gravity field is unlike that of
any terrestrial planet in our solar system.

These are the first scientific results from the prime phase of the
mission, and they are published in three papers in the journal
Science.

"What this map tells us is that more than any other celestial body we
know of, the moon wears its gravity field on its sleeve," said GRAIL
principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in Cambridge. "When we see a notable change in the gravity
field, we can sync up this change with surface topography features
such as craters, rilles or mountains."

According to Zuber, the moon's gravity field preserves the record of
impact bombardment that characterized all terrestrial planetary
bodies and reveals evidence for fracturing of the interior extending
to the deep crust and possibly the mantle. This impact record is
preserved, and now precisely measured, on the moon.

The probes revealed the bulk density of the moon's highland crust is
substantially lower than generally assumed. This low bulk crustal
density agrees well with data obtained during the final Apollo lunar
missions in early 1970s, indicating that local samples returned by
astronauts are indicative of global processes.

"With our new crustal bulk density determination, we find that the
average thickness of the moon's crust is between 21 and 27 miles (34
and 43 kilometers), which is about 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20
kilometers) thinner than previously thought." said GRAIL
co-investigator Mark Wieczorek of the Institut de Physique du Globe
de Paris. "With this crustal thickness, the bulk composition of the
moon is similar to that of Earth. This supports models where the moon
is derived from Earth materials that were ejected during a giant
impact event early in solar system history."

The map was created by the spacecraft transmitting radio signals to
define precisely the distance between them as they orbit the moon in
formation. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity
caused by both visible features, such as mountains and craters, and
masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between the two
spacecraft will change slightly.

"We used gradients of the gravity field in order to highlight smaller
and narrower structures than could be seen in previous datasets,"
said Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL guest scientist with the Colorado
School of Mines in Golden. "This data revealed a population of long,
linear, gravity anomalies, with lengths of hundreds of kilometers,
crisscrossing the surface. These linear gravity anomalies indicate
the presence of dikes, or long, thin, vertical bodies of solidified
magma in the subsurface. The dikes are among the oldest features on
the moon, and understanding them will tell us about its early
history."

While results from the primary science mission are just beginning to
be released, the collection of gravity science by the lunar twins
continues. GRAIL's extended mission science phase began Aug. 30 and
will conclude Dec. 17. As the end of mission nears, the spacecraft
will operate at lower orbital altitudes above the moon.

When launched in September 2011, the probes were named GRAIL A and B.
They were renamed Ebb and Flow in January by elementary students in
Bozeman, Mont., in a nationwide contest. Ebb and Flow were placed in
a near-polar, near-circular orbit at an altitude of approximately 34
miles (55 kilometers) on Dec. 31, 2011, and Jan. 1, 2012.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the
mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. GRAIL
is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of
Denver built the spacecraft.

Looking at the earth quite differently: Now satellites see the earth both during day and night

Unprecedented New Images of Earth at Night

Dec. 5, 2012: Today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, scientists unveiled an unprecedented new look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across Earth in greater detail than ever before.

"For all the reasons that we need to see Earth during the day, we also need to see Earth at night," said Steve Miller, a researcher at NOAA's Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. "Unlike humans, the Earth never sleeps."

Many satellites are equipped to look at Earth during the day, when they can observe our planet fully illuminated by the sun. With a new sensor aboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched last year, scientists now can observe Earth's atmosphere and surface during nighttime hours. The sensor, called "VIIRS" (short for Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite), is sensitive enough to detect the light from a single ship in the sea.

The day-night band of VIIRS observed Hurricane Sandy, illuminated by moonlight, making landfall over New Jersey on the evening of Oct. 29. Night images showed the widespread power outages that left millions in darkness in the wake of the storm. With its night view, VIIRS is able to detect a more complete view of storms and other weather conditions, such as fog, that are difficult to discern with infrared, or thermal, sensors. Night is also when many types of clouds begin to form.

"NOAA's National Weather Service is continuing to explore the use of the day-night band," said Mitch Goldberg, program scientist for NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System. "The very high resolution from VIIRS data will take forecasting weather events at night to a much higher level."

"It's like having three simultaneous low-light cameras operating at once and we pick the best of various cameras, depending on where we're looking in the scene," Miller said. The instrument can capture images on nights with or without moonlight, producing crisp views of Earth's atmosphere, land and ocean surfaces.Unlike a camera that captures a picture in one exposure, the day-night band produces an image by repeatedly scanning a scene and resolving it as millions of individual pixels. Then, the day-night band reviews the amount of light in each pixel. If it is very bright, a low-gain mode prevents the pixel from oversaturating. If the pixel is very dark, the signal is amplified.

"The night is nowhere as dark as we might think," Miller said. And with the VIIRS day-night band helping scientists to tease out information from human and natural sources of nighttime light, "we don't have to be in the dark anymore, either."

Catching outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thurderstorms: Fermi lab gets better vision, 10 times better than ever

FERMI IMPROVES ITS VISION FOR THUNDERSTORM GAMMA-RAY FLASHES
WASHINGTON -- Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new
operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the
brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above
thunderstorms.

The outbursts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), last
only a few thousandths of a second, but their gamma rays rank among
the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth. The enhanced
GBM discovery rate helped scientists show most TGFs also generate a
strong burst of radio waves, a finding that will change how
scientists study this poorly understood phenomenon, according to a NASA report.

Before being upgraded, the GBM could capture only TGFs that were
bright enough to trigger the instrument's on-board system, which
meant many weaker events were missed.

"In mid-2010, we began testing a mode where the GBM directly downloads
full-resolution gamma-ray data even when there is no on-board
trigger, and this allowed us to locate many faint TGFs we had been
missing," said lead researcher Valerie Connaughton, a member of the
GBM team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). She
presented the findings Wednesday in an invited talk at the American
Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. A paper detailing the
results is accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical
Research: Space Physics.

The results were so spectacular that on Nov. 26 the team uploaded new
flight software to operate the GBM in this mode continuously, rather
than in selected parts of Fermi's orbit.

Connaughton's team gathered GBM data for 601 TGFs from August 2008 to
August 2011, with most of the events, 409 in all, discovered through
the new techniques. The scientists then compared the gamma-ray data
to radio emissions over the same period.

Lightning emits a broad range of very low frequency (VLF) radio waves,
often heard as pop-and-crackle static when listening to AM radio. The
World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), a research
collaboration operated by the University of Washington in Seattle,
routinely detects these radio signals and uses them to pinpoint the
location of lightning discharges anywhere on the globe to within
about 12 miles (20 km).

Scientists have known for a long time TGFs were linked to strong VLF
bursts, but they interpreted these signals as originating from
lightning strokes somehow associated with the gamma-ray emission.

"Instead, we've found when a strong radio burst occurs almost
simultaneously with a TGF, the radio emission is coming from the TGF
itself," said co-author Michael Briggs, a member of the GBM team.

The researchers identified much weaker radio bursts that occur up to
several thousandths of a second before or after a TGF. They interpret
these signals as intracloud lightning strokes related to, but not
created by, the gamma-ray flash.

Scientists suspect TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the
tops of thunderstorms. Under certain conditions, the field becomes
strong enough that it drives a high-speed upward avalanche of
electrons, which give off gamma rays when they are deflected by air
molecules.

"What's new here is that the same electron avalanche likely
responsible for the gamma-ray emission also produces the VLF radio
bursts, and this gives us a new window into understanding this
phenomenon," said Joseph Dwyer, a physics professor at the Florida
Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla., and a member of the study
team.

Because the WWLLN radio positions are far more precise than those
based on Fermi's orbit, scientists will develop a much clearer
picture of where TGFs occur and perhaps which types of thunderstorms
tend to produce them.

The GBM scientists predict the new operating mode and analysis
techniques will allow them to catch about 850 TGFs each year. While
this is a great improvement, it remains a small fraction of the
roughly 1,100 TGFs that fire up each day somewhere on Earth,
according to the team's latest estimates.

Likewise, TGFs detectable by the GBM represent just a small fraction
of intracloud lightning, with about 2,000 cloud-to-cloud lightning
strokes for every TGF.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle
physics partnership and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md. Fermi was developed in collaboration with
the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from
academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Sweden and the United States.

The GBM Instrument Operations Center is located at the National Space
Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. The GBM team includes a
collaboration of scientists from UAH, NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
Physics in Germany and other institutions.