Public Invited to Two Free Earth Day 2012 Events at NASA Goddard

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is hosting two free events on April 18 in celebration of Earth Day's forty-second anniversary. Both events will take place at the NASA Goddard Visitor's Center on IceSat Road, Greenbelt, Md.

Often cited as the most-viewed photograph of all time, the view of Earth's disk from Apollo 17 is emblematic of our home planet as an isolated blue marble. Despite the ubiquity of the Blue Marble, few people realize NASA has viewed the Earth since the agency's creation. In this talk Rob Simmon of NASA's Earth Observatory will discuss the history of NASA's evolving views of Earth, from the first weather satellites to the latest climate missions, from the orbit of Mercury to the edge of the Solar System. He will also describe the techniques used to build images that simulate the view from space, including cloud-free global composites and a picture of the Eastern Hemisphere from NASA and NOAA's newest Earth-observing mission, Suomi NPP. Speaker: Robert Simmon, NASA's Earth Observatory
Length: 20 minutes

1 - 2 p.m. EDT -- See the broadcast presentation titled: "Beautiful Earth Multimedia Performance and Science Dialogue," on a big screen at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center Auditorium.

Join us on a musical and visual tour of Earth from space with interactive discussions through the Beautiful Earth program. Director and Musician Kenji Williams performs the BELLA GAIA (www.bellagaia.com) multimedia show along with interactive discussions by NASA Earth Scientist Thorsten Markus and Native American Science Educator Jim Rock. The Beautiful Earth program highlights Earth's water in all of its forms: liquid, solid, and vapor, from the western scientific, indigenous, artistic, and multi-cultural points of view. The program simulates spaceflight for the public and reminds us of the beauty and inter-connectedness of Earth’s life systems. Students and teachers from across the country will interact live with the program.

Three days of NASA activities will also be held on the National Mall in Washington from April 20 through April 22. The agency's involvement includes free activities and exhibits open to the public.

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Giant Prominence Erupts

A beautiful prominence eruption producing a coronal mass ejection (CME) shot off the east limb (left side) of the sun on April 16, 2012. Such eruptions are often associated with solar flares, and in this case an M1 class (medium-sized) flare occurred at the same time, peaking at 1:45 PM EDT. The CME was not aimed toward Earth.

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12-Mile-High Martian Dust Devil Caught in Act

A Martian dust devil roughly 12 miles high (20 kilometers) was captured whirling its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of Northern Mars on March 14. It was imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its height, the plume is little more than three-quarters of a football field wide (70 yards, or 70 meters).

Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground. Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground. As heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it, the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.

The image was taken during late northern spring, two weeks short of the northern summer solstice, a time when the ground in the northern mid-latitudes is being heated most strongly by the sun.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining the Red Planet with six science instruments since 2006. Now in an extended mission, the orbiter continues to provide insights into the planet's ancient environments and how processes such as wind, meteorite impacts and seasonal frosts continue to affect the Martian surface today. This mission has returned more data about Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined.

More than 21,700 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team's website: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu . Each observation by this telescopic camera covers several square miles, or square kilometers, and can reveal features as small as a desk.

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and the Mars Exploration Rover Project are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter.

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Hurricane Season 2012: Typhoon Pakhar (Western North Pacific Ocean)

Typhoon Pakhar made landfall on April 1 at 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT) in southeastern Vietnam and NASA satellites tracked its progress across Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and into the Gulf of Thailand.

A NASA satellite captured two infrared images of the clouds and thunderstorms that Pakhar brought when it made landfall. The two images were captured from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite on April 1 and April 2, after Typhoon Pakhar made landfall in southeastern Vietnam. The coldest cloud top temperatures were as cold as -63F (~-52C) and indicated the strongest thunderstorms with the heaviest rainfall. The images were from April 1 at 1823 UTC (2:23 p.m. EDT) when Pakhar had moved into Cambodia and April 2 at 0647 UTC (2:47 a.m. EDT) when the remnants moved into the Gulf of Thailand.

According to Vietnam News.com, as Pakhar made landfall it affected seven provinces including Ho Chi Minh City, with heavy rains and gusty winds. Two deaths and 10 injuries were reported. The province of Dong Nai, Bien Hoa City reported more than 700 damaged homes. Flooded streets, damaged structures and downed trees were reported throughout.

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