Hello, Saturn Summer Solstice: Cassini's New Chapter

Turning a midsummer night's dream into reality, NASA's Cassini spacecraft begins its new mission extension -- the Cassini Solstice Mission -- today. The mission extension will take Cassini a few months past Saturn's northern summer solstice (or midsummer) through September 2017. It will enable scientists to study seasonal changes and other long-term weather changes on Saturn and its moons.Cassini had arrived just after Saturn's northern winter solstice in 2004, and the extension continues a few...

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Wildfires: A Symptom of Climate Change

This summer, wildfires swept across some 22 regions of Russia, blanketing the country with dense smoke and in some cases destroying entire villages. In the foothills of Boulder, Colo., this month, wildfires exacted a similar toll on a smaller scale.That's just the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of wildfires large and small are underway at any given time across the globe. Beyond the obvious immediate health effects, this "biomass" burning is part of the equation for global warming. In northern latitudes,...

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Dust Models Paint Alien's View of Solar System

New supercomputer simulations tracking the interactions of thousands of dust grains show what the solar system might look like to alien astronomers searching for planets. The models also provide a glimpse of how this view might have changed as our planetary system matured."The planets may be too dim to detect directly, but aliens studying the solar system could easily determine the presence of Neptune -- its gravity carves a little gap in the dust," said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's...

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Spring on Titan Brings Sunshine and Patchy Clouds

The northern hemisphere of Saturn's moon Titan is set for mainly fine spring weather, with polar skies clearing since the equinox in August last year. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been monitoring clouds on Titan regularly since the spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Now, a group led by Sébastien Rodriguez, a Cassini VIMS team collaborator based at Université Paris Diderot, France, has analyzed more than 2,000 VIMS images to...

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NASA Study Shows Desert Dust Cuts Colorado River Flow

PASADENA, Calif. – Snowmelt in the Colorado River basin is occurring earlier, reducing runoff and the amount of crucial water available downstream. A new study shows this is due to increased dust caused by human activities in the region during the past 150 years.The study, led by a NASA scientist and funded by the agency and the National Science Foundation, showed peak spring runoff now comes three weeks earlier than before the region was settled and soils were disturbed. Annual runoff is lower...

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Five Things About NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term program of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in late 2011, and arrive at an intriguing region of Mars in August 2012. The goal of Curiosity, a rolling laboratory, is to assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting microbial life and conditions favorable for preserving clues about life, if it existed. This will help...

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Missing Piece Inspires New Look at Mars Puzzle

PASADENA, Calif. -- Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life."This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. McKay coauthored a study published...

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NASA Data Shed New Light About Water and Volcanoes on Mars

HOUSTON -- Data from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest liquid water has interacted with the Martian surface throughout the planet's history and into modern times. The research also provides new evidence that volcanic activity has persisted on the Red Planet into geologically recent times, several million years ago.Although the lander, which arrived on Mars on May 25, 2008, is no longer operating, NASA scientists continue to analyze data gathered from that mission. These recent findings are based...

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NASA's Next Mars Rover Rolls Over Ramps

PASADENA, Calif. -- The rover Curiosity, which NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will place on Mars in August 2012, has been rolling over ramps in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test its mobility system.Curiosity uses the same type of six-wheel, rocker-bogie suspension system as previous Mars rovers, for handling uneven terrain during drives. Its wheels are half a meter (20 inches) in diameter, twice the height of the wheels on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers currently...

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NASA and NOAA's Newest GOES Satellite Ready for Action

GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA and NOAA's latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, has successfully completed five months of on-orbit testing and has been accepted into service. The satellite has demonstrated operational readiness of its subsystems, spacecraft instruments and communications services. GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites.The GOES fleet help NOAA forecasters track life-threatening weather...

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Deadly Tides Mean Early Exit for Hot Jupiters

Bad news for planet hunters: most of the "hot Jupiters" that astronomers have been searching for in star clusters were likely destroyed long ago by their stars. In a paper accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal, John Debes and Brian Jackson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., offer this new explanation for why no transiting planets (planets that pass in front of their stars and temporarily block some of the light) have been found yet in star clusters. The researchers...

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Extreme Effects: Seven Things You Didn't Know About Mercury

Pity poor Mercury. The tiny planet endures endless assaults by intense sunlight, powerful solar wind and high-speed miniature meteoroids called micrometeoroids. The planet's flimsy covering, the exosphere, nearly blends in with the vacuum of space, making it too thin to offer protection. Because of this, it's tempting to think of Mercury's exosphere as just the battered remains of ancient atmosphere. Really, though, the exosphere is constantly changing and being renewed with sodium, potassium, calcium,...

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NASA Selects Science Investigations for Solar Probe Plus

WASHINGTON -- NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018.The small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star's surface. It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun's biggest mysteries"The experiments...

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Space Station Crew Talks With Students At Florida Science Center

WASHINGTON -- Approximately 500 middle school students and teachers at the Pinellas County Science Center in St. Petersburg, Fla., will have an out-of-this-world phone conversation with NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station.Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and Shannon Walker will make the long-distance phone call on Thursday, Sept. 9, from 11:45 a.m. to 12:05 p.m. EDT.Students have prepared for the downlink by using data from NASA's satellite network to complete...

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NASA Sets Briefing About Assistance To Trapped Miners In Chile

HOUSTON -- A NASA team sent to Chile to aid trapped miners will hold a news conference about their work at the San Jose gold and copper mine near Copiapo at noon CDT, Tuesday, Sept. 7. The conference will be at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and it will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.The participants also will answer questions from reporters at participating NASA centers. For journalists not able to attend at a NASA center, a limited number of phone lines are available...

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NASA Selects Investigations For First Mission To Encounter The Sun

WASHINGTON -- NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018.The small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star's surface. It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun's biggest mysteries."The experiments...

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NASA Selects University Finalists for Inflatable Loft Competition

WASHINGTON -- NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation have selected university teams from Maryland, Oklahoma and Wisconsin as finalists in a competition to design, manufacture, assemble and test an inflatable loft.NASA is challenging college students to design and rapidly develop prototype concepts for inflatable habitat lofts for the next generation of space explorers. The loft will be integrated onto an existing NASA operational hard-shell prototype habitat. The winning concepts may be applied...

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