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.

Athabasca Oil Sands

Buried under Canada’s boreal forest is one of the world’s largest reserves of oil. Bitumen—a very thick and heavy form of oil (also called asphalt)—coats grains of sand and other minerals in a deposit that covers about 142,200 square kilometers (54,900 square miles) of northwest Alberta. According to a 2003 estimate, Alberta has the capacity to produce 174.5 billion barrels of oil.

Only 20 percent of the oil sands lie near the surface where they can easily be mined, and these deposits flank the Athabasca River. The rest of the oil sands are buried more than 75 meters below ground and are extracted by injecting hot water into a well that liquefies the oil for pumping. In 2010, surface mines produced 356.99 million barrels of crude oil, while in situ production (the hot water wells) yielded 189.41 million barrels of oil.

This series of images from the Landsat satellite shows the growth of surface mines over the Athabasca oil sands between 1984 and 2011. The Athabasca River runs through the center of the scene, separating two major operations. To extract the oil at these locations, oil producers remove the sand in big, open-pit mines, which are tan and irregularly shaped. The sand is rinsed with hot water to separate the oil, and then the sand and wastewater are stored in “tailings ponds,” which have smooth tan or green surfaces in satellite images.

The process of extracting oil from the sand is expensive. It takes two tons of sand to produce one barrel of crude oil. Great Canadian Oil Sands opened the first large-scale mine in 1967, but growth was slow until 2000 because the global cost of a barrel of oil was too low to make oil sands profitable.

The images above show slow growth between 1984 and 2000, followed by a decade of more rapid development. The first mine (from 1967, now part of the Millennium Mine) is visible near the Athabasca River in the 1984 image. The only new development visible between 1984 and 2000 is the Mildred Lake Mine (west of the river), which began production in 1996.

For more info, visit http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/athabasca.php?src=features-hp

NASA Hosts 150 Twitter Followers at Mars Rover Launch

NASA has invited 150 followers of the agency's Twitter account to a two-day launch Tweetup on Nov. 23 and 25 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover aboard an Atlas V rocket from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The launch window is scheduled to open at 7:25 a.m. PST (10:25 a.m. EST) on Nov. 25. Curiosity's arrival at Mars' Gale Crater is anticipated in August 2012. During the nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether a selected area of Mars offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and preserved that evidence, if it existed.

Tweetup participants were selected from more than 1,050 people who registered online. They will share their Tweetup experiences with their followers through the social networking site Twitter and other online forums.

Participants represent the United States, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Attendees from the U.S. come from the District of Columbia and 37 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Beginning at 8 a.m. PST (11 a.m. EST) on Wednesday, Nov. 23, NASA will broadcast a portion of the Tweetup when attendees talk with Jim Green, Planetary Science division director, and Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration program director, both from NASA Headquarters in Washington. Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., where the rover was designed and built, will speak, as will mission scientists.

For more info, read http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20111116.html

Hovering on the Horizon

The limb of the Earth is a work of awesome beauty and a gift to science. When observed from space, the palette of gaseous layers of atmosphere reminds us of the fragility and tenuousness of the cocoon that shelters life from cold, harsh space. That same view also allows scientists to detect the gases and particles that make up our different layers of our atmosphere. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured a bit of both in this digital photograph from July 31, 2011. They threw in the Moon as an extra gift.

Closest to Earth's surface, the orange-red glow reveals Earth's troposphere—the lowest, densest layer of the atmosphere, and the one we live within. A brown transitional layer is the upper edge of the troposphere, known as the tropopause. A milky white and gray layer sits above that, likely a slice of the stratosphere with perhaps some noctilucent clouds thrown in. The upper reaches of the atmosphere - the mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere - fade from shades of blue to the blackness of space.

The different colors occur because the dominant gases and particles in each layer act like prisms filtering out certain colors of light. Instruments carried on satellites and on craft such as the space shuttle have allowed scientists to decipher characteristics of the ozone layer and the climate-altering effects of aerosols.

A thin crescent of the Moon is illuminated by the Sun below the horizon of the Earth. Though the Moon is more than 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) away, the perspective from the camera makes it appear to be a part of our atmosphere.

Landsat in Memory of the World Register

The Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) data archive of 652,000 images of Earth was nominated to be part of the register in 2010. In 2011, it was officially accepted along with six other submissionsincluding Byzantine manuscripts from Georgia and early reports from the 1922 first flight across the South Atlantic.

As stated in the Landsat nomination: “There is simply no other image record of the Earth’s land regions at this scale or over the same period of time (1972-1992).”

The image above, showing southern California, is one of thousands in the twenty-year archive. Landsat MSS acquired the image on May 18, 1978. Plant-covered land is red, with forests on the mountain ranges a darker shade than vegetation at lower elevations. Bare ground and cities are pale blue, and water is dark blue and black. The image provides a baseline from which scientists can measure changes in land use, urban growth, or the impacts of natural disasters.

All U.S.-held Landsat data are managed by the U.S. Geological Survey, which maintains original digital files in its primary archives, plus back-up copies in off-site locations. Each Landsat “scene” - with 79-meter spatial resolution and 185-by-185 kilometer area - fills an important scientific niche because the sensor provided global, seasonal coverage. Its images are also detailed enough to characterize human activities, such as urban expansion, agricultural irrigation, and deforestation.

New NASA Missions to Investigate How Mars Turned Hostile

Maybe because it appears as a speck of blood in the sky, the planet Mars was named after the Roman god of war. From the point of view of life as we know it, that's appropriate. The Martian surface is incredibly hostile for life. The Red Planet's thin atmosphere does little to shield the ground against radiation from the Sun and space. Harsh chemicals, like hydrogen peroxide, permeate the soil. Liquid water, a necessity for life, can't exist for very long here—any that does not quickly evaporate in the diffuse air will soon freeze out in subzero temperatures common over much of the planet.

It wasn't always this way. There are signs that in the distant past, billions of years ago, Mars was a much more inviting place. Martian terrain is carved with channels that resemble dry riverbeds. Spacecraft sent to orbit Mars have identified patches of minerals that form only in the presence of liquid water.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission features Curiosity, the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to the Red Planet. The Curiosity rover bristles with multiple cameras and instruments, including Goddard's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. By looking for evidence of water, carbon, and other important building blocks of life in the Martian soil and atmosphere, SAM will help discover whether Mars ever had the potential to support life. Scheduled to launch in late November or December 2011, Curiosity will be delivered to Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide crater that contains a record of environmental changes in its sedimentary rock, in August 2012.