NASA's New 'Earth-Now' App - Your World, Unplugged

A free, new iPhone app from NASA literally puts the whole world in the palm of your hands. "Earth-Now" immerses cyber explorers in dazzling visualizations of near-real-time global climate data from NASA's fleet of Earth science satellites.

Available at the iTunes Store or by visiting http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/apps , Earth-Now displays data on many of the key vital signs of our planet that NASA satellites track. Whether your interest is current surface air temperatures over Australia, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide levels over Canada, ozone over Oman, water vapor over Wales, gravity anomalies in Greenland or sea level height anomalies at St. Petersburg, Earth-Now brings a world of ever-changing climate data to your fingertips.

The regularly updated data are displayed as color maps projected over a 3D Earth model that can be rotated by a single finger stroke, or zoomed in and out by the pinch or spread of two fingers. Color-coded legends indicate the relative strength or weakness of environmental conditions. Helpful descriptions provide background information on each data set.

"Earth-Now is a great resource for students, teachers and anyone interested in Earth's changing climate," said Michael Greene, manager for public engagement formulation and strategic alliances at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Since its debut last month, it's already been downloaded nearly 170,000 times. Plans are in place for development of an Android version and for the addition of new NASA Earth science data sets over time."

Earth-Now is closely integrated with NASA's Webby Award-winning Global Climate Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov , which is devoted to educating the public about Earth's changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it. The app was developed by the Earth Science Communications, Visualization Technology Applications and Development Teams at JPL, with support from NASA Headquarters.

Read more on http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20120319.html

NASA Releases First Multi-Player Facebook Game

Who was the first American to walk in space? Who launched the first liquid-fueled rocket? In what movie did O.J. Simpson play NASA astronaut?

If you know the answers to these questions, or are just curious to find out, you're ready to play Space Race Blastoff, NASA's first online game for the social media age.

Available through its own Facebook page, Space Race Blastoff pits players in remote locations in a test of their knowledge of NASA history, technology, science and pop culture. Players who correctly answer questions earn virtual badges depicting NASA astronauts, spacecraft and astronomical objects. Players also earn points they can use to obtain additional badges to complete sets that earn premium badges.

"We're hoping Space Race Blastoff opens up NASA's history and research to a wide new audience of people accustomed to using social media," said David Weaver, NASA's associate administrator for communications. "We're really excited to see what the interest will be."

NASA chose to make the game available through Facebook to take advantage of the social media site's large audience and enable players to compete against others. Individuals can also play solo games.

Once in the game, players can choose an avatar and answer 10 multiple-choice questions. Each correct answer earns 100 points, with a 20-point bonus to the player who answers first. The winner advances to the bonus round to answer one additional question for more points. Answering the bonus question earns the player a badge, which may depict an astronaut, a spacecraft, a planet or other person or object. Additional badges can be obtained for 1,500 points.

The game, developed by Scott Hanger, Todd Powell and Jamie Noguchi of NASA's Internet Services Group in the Office of Communications, is available via its Facebook page: http://apps.facebook.com/spacerace.

Read more on http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/features/space_race_blastoff.html

Add Salt? Astronauts' Bones Say Please Don't

Osteoporosis is a harsh disease that reduces the quality of life for millions and costs Europe around €25 billion ($31 billion) each year. It typically affects the elderly, so the rise in life expectancy in developed countries means the problems inflicted by osteoporosis are increasing.

Fortunately, research done in space may change the game. Astronauts on the International Space Station experience accelerated osteoporosis because of weightlessness, but it is carefully controlled, and they can regain their lost bone mass once they are back on Earth.

Studying what happens during long spaceflights offers a good insight into the process of osteoporosis -- losing calcium and changing bone structure -- and helps to develop methods to combat it.

It has been known since the 1990s that the human body holds on to sodium, without the corresponding water retention, during long stays in space. But the textbooks said this was not possible. "Sodium retention in space" became an important subject to study.

Salt intake was investigated in a series of studies, in ground-based simulations and in space, and it was found that not only is sodium retained (probably in the skin), but it also affects the acid balance of the body and bone metabolism. So, high salt intake increases acidity in the body, which can accelerate bone loss.

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/salt.html

THEMIS Celebrates Five Years of Watching Aurora and Space Weather

People still talk about the launch. It was the first – and so far, only – time NASA has launched five satellites at one time. Carefully balanced inside a Delta II rocket, the five THEMIS (short for Timed History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) spacecraft were launched into space from Cape Canaveral at 6:01 p.m. ET on February 17, 2007. The spacecraft were nestled in a ring shape, four around the outside and one on a middle pedestal. A critical sequencing guided how each spacecraft launched into space, first the top one, then the ones on the outside, so the platform would remain balanced and stable.

"The launch of THEMIS was one of the first Explorer missions I oversaw from concept through launch and on-orbit checkout and it still stands out in my mind," says Willis Jenkins, the Program Executive for NASA's Explorers Program, a program that supports less expensive and highly focused missions. "Trying to get five spacecraft together on one rocket was a challenge, but our team came up with unique ways to build and launch them."

Those five satellites working in tandem was crucial for THEMIS' job of tracking energy as it moves through space. Energy and radiation from the sun impacts and changes Earth's magnetic environment, the magnetosphere, and such impacts cause "space weather" that can harm satellites in space.

As they orbit around Earth, the THEMIS satellites work together to gather data on how any given space weather event travels through space – something impossible to understand with a single spacecraft, which cannot differentiate between an occurrence that happens throughout space, rather than in a single location. Since 2007, the THEMIS satellites have reinvigorated studies of the magnetosphere, mapping the details of how explosive auroras occur, how the solar wind transfers energy to Earth's space environment, and how chirping waves in space relate to blinking auroras on Earth.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/news/five-years.html

NASA Landsat's Thermal Infrared Sensor Arrives at Orbital

A new NASA satellite instrument that makes a quantum leap forward in detector technology has arrived at Orbital Sciences Corp. in Gilbert, Ariz. There it will be integrated into the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM).

The Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) will take the Earth's temperature with a new technology that applies quantum physics to detect heat. The engineering team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., completed TIRS on an accelerated schedule, going from plans on paper to building the instrument in an unprecedented 43 months. "That's a full year ahead of a typical schedule for a new space borne instrument," says Betsy Forsbacka, TIRS instrument manager.

"Two things made this remarkable achievement possible," says James Irons, LDCM project scientist. "The dedication of the TIRS team working nearly around-the-clock and the use of advanced detector arrays we had on-hand because Goddard played a major role in developing the technology. TIRS will be the first time this technology is used in space."

TIRS uses Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIPs) to detect long wavelengths of light emitted by the Earth with an intensity depending on surface temperature. These wavelengths, called thermal infrared, are well beyond the range of human vision and while devices for thermal infrared night 'vision' have long been available, QWIPs offered a new lower-cost alternative to conventional infrared technology. QWIPs arrays are designed for sensitivity to specific wavelengths.

Read more, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/tirs-arrives.html

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer in Standby Mode

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or Galex, was placed in standby mode today as engineers prepare to end mission operations, nearly nine years after the telescope's launch. The spacecraft is scheduled to be decommissioned - taken out of service - later this year. The mission extensively mapped large portions of the sky with sharp ultraviolet vision, cataloguing millions of galaxies spanning 10 billion years of cosmic time.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched into space from a Pegasus XL rocket in April of 2003. Since completing its prime mission in the fall of 2007, the mission was extended to continue its census of stars and galaxies.

The mission's science highlights include the discovery of a gigantic comet-like tail behind a speeding star, rings of new stars around old galaxies, and "teenager" galaxies, which help to explain how galaxies evolve. The observatory also helped confirm the existence of the mysterious substance or force known as dark energy, and even caught a black hole devouring a star.

For more info, visit : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex20120207.html

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Refines its Path to Jupiter

NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully refined its flight path Wednesday with the mission's first trajectory correction maneuver. The maneuver took place on Feb. 1. It is the first of a dozen planned rocket firings that, over the next five years, will keep Juno on course for its rendezvous with Jupiter.

"We had a maneuver planned soon after launch but our Atlas V rocket gave us such a good ride we didn't need to make any trajectory changes," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It is good to get another first under our belt. This burn couldn't have gone any better."

The trajectory correction maneuver, which adjusts the spacecraft's flight path, began at 10:10 a.m. PST (1:10 p.m. EST) on Feb. 1. The Juno spacecraft's thrusters fired for 25 minutes, consumed about 6.9 pounds (3.11 kilograms) of fuel and changed the spacecraft's speed by 3.9 feet, or 1.2 meters, per second. The next big maneuver for Juno will occur in late August of 2012 when Juno executes its first of two deep space maneuvers to set the stage for its Earth flyby – and gravity assist – on its way to Jupiter.

For more info, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/news/juno20120202.html

NASA's Kepler Announces 11 Planetary Systems Hosting 26 Planets

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, its host star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

The planets orbit close to their host stars and range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen of them are between Earth and Neptune in size, and further observations will be required to determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.

"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/new-multi-systems.html

The Sun Flares with Activity

Following one of the longest and weakest periods of activity in many cycles, the Sun is brimming with activity again. In late January 2012, our nearest star offered a preview of what may be to come in the solar maximum of 2012–13. The storm has the potential to disrupt some communications and satellite systems and to bring auroras to high-latitude skies.

The images above show a solar flare as observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at 03:27, 03:42, and 04:12 Universal Time (Greenwich Time) on January 23. Note the brightening of the solar surface as gas was superheated and magnetically supercharged. By the third (right) image, a stream of solar material is seen flowing off into space above the hot spot, likely solar protons and a coronal mass ejection. Click on the enlarged images and movies for a wider view.

The high-latitude solar flare was measured as M8.7 in intensity, just below the most intense “X class” of flares. The eruption sent a stream of fast-moving, highly energetic protons toward Earth, provoking the most intense solar energetic particle storm—an S3 on NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center’s scale—since 2005.

The flare was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a cloud of solar plasma that was ejected from the solar atmosphere in the direction of Earth. The CME was observed by the STEREO and SOHO spacecraft with an initial speed of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,400 miles) per second. It was estimated to reach Earth sometime on January 24 and Mars on January 25. NOAA forecasters were predicting a G2 geomagnetic storm, though a G3 was possible.

Solar flares and CMEs are not a danger to humans on Earth's surface, as the planet's magnetic field (magnetosphere) and atmosphere deflect and absorb the solar energy and particles. The sun storms can pose some risks to astronauts, and they can upset the electronics and transmissions on science, military, and communications satellites. Closer to Earth's surface, solar activity can cause disruptions of radio signals (particularly HF), provide a small dose of radiation to passengers on high-latitude flights, and provoke auroras (northern and southern lights).

NASA Cold Weather Airborne Campaign to Measure Falling Snow

Beginning Jan. 17, NASA will fly an airborne science laboratory above Canadian snowstorms to tackle a difficult challenge facing the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite mission - measuring snowfall from space.

GPM is an international satellite mission that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space, providing next-generation observations of worldwide rain and snow every three hours. It is also the first mission designed to detect falling snow from space.

"Snow is notoriously hard to measure as it falls," said Walter Petersen, the GPM ground validation scientist at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. "Snowflakes contain varying amounts of air and water, and they flutter, wobble and drift as they leave the clouds."

Knowing how "wet" a snowflake is allows scientists to measure overall water content. A wet, heavy snow can shut down a city, and melted snow is a crucial source of freshwater in many areas.

Working with Environment Canada, NASA's GPM Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) will measure light rain and snow in Ontario from Jan. 17 to Feb. 29. The field campaign is designed to improve satellite estimates of falling snow and test ground validation capabilities in advance of the planned launch of the GPM Core satellite in 2014.

NASA's DC-8 airborne science laboratory will fly out of Bangor, Maine, carrying radar and a radiometer that will simulate the measurements to be taken from space by GPM. At an altitude of 33,000 feet (10 kilometers), the DC-8 will make multiple passes over an extensive ground network of snow gauges and sensors at Environment Canada's Center for Atmospheric Research Experiments north of Toronto.

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/winter-dc8.html

Revisiting the 'Pillars of Creation'

In 1995, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took an iconic image of the Eagle nebula, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation," highlighting its finger-like pillars where new stars are thought to be forming. Now, the Herschel Space Observatory has a new, expansive view of the region captured in longer-wavelength infrared light.

The Herschel mission is led by the European Space Agency, with important NASA contributions.

The Eagle nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens. It contains a young, hot star cluster, NGC6611, visible with modest backyard telescopes, which is sculpting and illuminating the surrounding gas and dust. The result is a huge, hollowed-out cavity and pillars, each several light-years long.

The new Herschel image shows the pillars and the wide field of gas and dust around them. Captured in far-infrared wavelengths, the image allows astronomers to see inside the pillars and structures in the region. Herschel's image also makes it possible to search for young stars over a much wider region, and come to a much fuller understanding of the creative and destructive forces inside the Eagle nebula.

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/news/herschel20120118.html

Two Earth Satellites Viewed From Houston

This photograph taken from Houston, Texas, juxtaposes Earth’s oldest satellite with one of its youngest. The Moon is thought to have been formed by the impact of a large body (perhaps Mars-sized) with the early Earth approximately 4.6 billion years ago. In contrast, the first components of the International Space Station (ISS) assumed orbit around the Earth in 1998, with assembly completed 13 years later—a significant period of time to us, but the merest fraction of a second in the history of the Moon.

While the ISS appears to be fairly close to the Moon’s surface in the image, it’s a trick of perspective. The Moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles), while the ISS orbits at altitudes ranging from approximately 330 to 410 kilometers (205 to 255 miles).

The ISS can frequently be viewed from the Earth’s surface with the naked eye as a bright object moving rapidly across the sky. The ISS has also been photographed from Earth transiting more dramatic backdrops, such as the Sun.

As can be seen in the high-resolution version of this image, major structural elements of the Station - such as the solar panel arrays - can be resolved using high-powered binoculars or lenses. Major features of the lunar nearside surface are likewise discernable with the naked eye, the most obvious being the dark maria lowlands (mare in plural) contrasting with the bright highland regions (or terrae). With moderate magnification, other features such as impact craters become clearly visible; for example, Copernicus and Tycho Craters.

Seeing Forests for the Trees and the Carbon

Trees cool and moisten our air and fill it with oxygen. They calm the winds and shade the land from sunlight. They shelter countless species, anchor the soil, and slow the movement of water. They provide food, fuel, medicines, and building materials for human activity.

Scientists estimate that humans release about nine billion tons of carbon (mostly carbon dioxide) each year by burning fossil fuels and by changing the landscape. About four billion tons end up in the atmosphere and two billion tons dissolve in the ocean. The last three billion go into ecosystems on land, but exactly where these sinks are located remains an open question.

Forests are considered one of the world’s largest banks for all of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere through natural processes and human activities. They cover about 30 percent of Earth’s land surface, while accounting for 50 percent of plant productivity. As much as 45 percent of the carbon stored on land is tied up in forests.

2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

Source :http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

Where the Trees Are

Trees are one of Earth’s largest banks for storing the carbon that gets emitted by natural processes and human activities. Forests cover about 30 percent of the planet’s surface, and as much as 45 percent of the carbon stored on land is tied up in forests.

But did global forests hold more or less carbon in the past? And could they store more in the future? Does it matter where those trees are growing? Scientists really don’t know. But before they can find out, they’ll need a reliable inventory of what is growing today.

Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) recently worked with colleagues at the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey to create such an inventory for the United States. The map above was built from the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD), released in 2011. It depicts the concentration of biomass - a measure of the amount of organic - in the trunks, limbs, and leaves of trees. The darkest greens reveal the areas with the densest, tallest, and most robust forest growth.

Over six years, researchers assembled the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data. It is possibly the highest resolution and most detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage ever assembled for any country.

Forests in the U.S. were mapped down to a scale of 30 meters, or roughly 10 computer display pixels for every hectare of land (4 pixels per acre). They divided the country into 66 mapping zones and ended up mapping 265 million segments of the American land surface. Kellndorfer estimates that their mapping database includes measurements of about five million trees.

For more info, visit: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76697

2012: Fear No Supernova

Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion - as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime - another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. However, given the vastness of space and the long times between supernovae, astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.

Astronomers estimate that, on average, about one or two supernovae explode each century in our galaxy. But for Earth's ozone layer to experience damage from a supernova, the blast must occur less than 50 light-years away. All of the nearby stars capable of going supernova are much farther than this.

Any planet with life on it near a star that goes supernova would indeed experience problems. X- and gamma-ray radiation from the supernova could damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet light in the sun's rays. The less ozone there is, the more UV light reaches the surface. At some wavelengths, just a 10 percent increase in ground-level UV can be lethal to some organisms, including phytoplankton near the ocean surface. Because these organisms form the basis of oxygen production on Earth and the marine food chain, any significant disruption to them could cascade into a planet-wide problem.

First Global Image from VIIRS

The NPP satellite launched on October 28, 2011, and VIIRS acquired its first measurements on November 21. To date, the images are preliminary, used to gauge the health of the sensor as engineers continue to power it up for full operation.

Rising from the south and setting in the north on the daylight side of Earth, VIIRS images the surface in long wedges measuring 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) across. The swaths from each successive orbit overlap one another, so that at the end of the day, the sensor has a complete view of the globe. The Arctic is missing because it is too dark to view in visible light during the winter.

The NPP satellite was placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit, a unique path that takes the satellite over the equator at the same local (ground) time in every orbit. So, when NPP flies over Kenya, it is about 1:30 p.m. on the ground. When NPP reaches Gabon - about 3,000 kilometers to the west - on the next orbit, it is close to 1:30 p.m. on the ground. This orbit allows the satellite to maintain the same angle between the Earth and the Sun so that all images have similar lighting.

The consistent lighting is evident in the daily global image. Stripes of sunlight (sunglint) reflect off the ocean in the same place on the left side of every swath. The consistent angle is important because it allows scientists to compare images from year to year without worrying about extreme changes in shadows and lighting.

Clouds over the Indian Ocean

As citizens of northern countries ponder sculpted snow and ice, or icings for baked goods, the summer skies over the southern oceans offered their own vision in white in the early winter of 2011. The brush strokes of bright holiday swirls were made by winds and atmospheric eddies moving over the far southern reaches of the Indian Ocean.

The natural-color image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on November 30, 2011. According to Patrick Minnis, a cloud expert at NASA’s Langley Research Center, there are at least three layers of clouds in the image.

The lowest layer is a marine stratus (stratocumulus) deck that covers the lower left two-thirds of the image. “The clouds look like whipped, mashed potatoes with swirls and bright peaks,” Minnis said. “The bright peaks indicate glaciations-freezing of the super-cooled cloud droplets. The swirls are reflective of eddies in the low-level wind fields.”

Just above (or perhaps continuous with) the marine layer, parallel wave patterns mark a brighter layer of stratus clouds that cover the other third of scene. Above it all, in the upper right quadrant, a high cirrus cloud throws shadows on the clouds below.

Tom Arnold, an atmospheric scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explained that marine stratus clouds can form (and persist) where there is a meeting between a cold ocean surface, some wind, and a strong temperature inversion at the top of the atmospheric boundary layer (about 2,000 to 3000 feet). “The cold ocean cools and moistens the low level air, making the low cloud base possible,” Arnold noted. “The wind helps lift the air, and the temperature inversion acts a kind of cap on the cloud layer, preventing much vertical mixing with the warmer, drier, and more stable air immediately above the boundary layer.”

The temperature inversion layer is a product of a large area of high pressure that causes air to slowly sink, Arnold added. The sinking air compresses the air-and thus warms and dry’s it-forming the temperature inversion layer over the top of the colder ocean-cooled air.

Trio of NASA Missions Named 'Best of What's New'

NASA's Dawn, Mars Science Laboratory and MESSENGER missions have earned recognition from Popular Science magazine as innovations worthy of the publication's "Best of What's New" Award in the aviation and space category.

Dawn and Mars Science Laboratory are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dawn is currently orbiting and exploring the massive main-belt asteroid Vesta. The Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover launched on Nov. 26 on a journey to the Red Planet, where the rover will look for signs of past or present habitability.

The MESSENGER mission is currently orbiting Mercury.

More information on the award winners is online at: http://www.popsci.com/bown/2011/category/aviation-amp-space .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Dawn and Mars Science Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the MESSENGER mission as principal investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft for NASA.

Asteroid Research Begins Under the Sea

NASA is using a capability-driven approach to new concepts of human exploration for multiple destinations in our solar system; one of those destinations are near-Earth asteroids. Across the agency, experts are being called into action to develop solutions to this new challenge. In particular, the NEEMO 15 analog field test, slated for mid-October this year, will test new tools, techniques, time lining approaches and communication technologies which could be useful when humans approach asteroids in space.

During the week of May 9-15, 2011, the NEEMO 15 support team is conducting engineering evaluations in the Aquarius undersea research laboratory in Key Largo, Fla. The purpose of these engineering tests is to understand the equipment, techniques and test concepts that will be implemented in the October NEEMO 15 mission, to make sure that all systems are ready for more rigorous testing when the crew will be living full-time in the Aquarius undersea habitat.

The specific operations for visiting an asteroid have not been considered in great detail before. Gravity on an asteroid is negligible, so walking around on one isn't really an option. Anchoring to the surface will probably be necessary, but asteroids are made up of different materials - some solid metal, some piles of rubble and some, a combination of rock, pebbles and dust.

Weak gravity and diverse materials present problems whose solutions can be experimented with on the ocean floor, which is what the NEEMO 15 mission is trying to do. NEEMO 15 will focus on three different aspects of a mission to an asteroid surface. The first is anchoring to the surface of the asteroid.