Nasa Technology News

A massive star flung away from its former companion is plowing through space dust. The result is a brilliant bow shock, seen here as a yellow arc in a new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

The star, named Zeta Ophiuchi, is huge, with a mass of about 20 times that of our sun. In this image, in which infrared light has been translated into visible colors we see with our eyes, the star appears as the blue dot inside the bow shock.

Zeta Ophiuchi once orbited around an even heftier star. But when that star exploded in a supernova, Zeta Ophiuchi shot away like a bullet. It's traveling at a whopping 54,000 miles per hour (or 24 kilometers per second), and heading toward the upper left area of the picture.

As the star tears through space, its powerful winds push gas and dust out of its way and into what is called a bow shock. The material in the bow shock is so compressed that it glows with infrared light that WISE can see. The effect is similar to what happens when a boat speeds through water, pushing a wave in front of it.

This bow shock is completely hidden in visible light. Infrared images like this one from WISE are therefore important for shedding new light on the region.

JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

An innovative new radio telescope array under construction in central New Mexico will eventually harness the power of more than 13,000 antennas and provide a fresh eye to the sky. The antennas, which resemble droopy ceiling fans, form the Long Wavelength Array, designed to survey the sky from horizon to horizon over a wide range of frequencies.

The University of New Mexico leads the project, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., provides the advanced digital electronic systems, which represent a major component of the observatory.

The first station in the Long Wavelength Array, with 256 antennas, is scheduled to start surveying the sky by this summer. When complete, the Long Wavelength Array will consist of 53 stations, with a total of 13,000 antennas strategically placed in an area nearly 400 kilometers (248 miles) in diameter. The antennas will provide sensitive, high-resolution images of a region of the sky hundreds of times larger than the full moon. These images could reveal radio waves coming from planets outside our solar system, and thus would turn out to be a new way to detect these worlds. In addition to planets, the telescope will pick up a host of other cosmic phenomena.

"We'll be looking for the occasional celestial flash," said Joseph Lazio, a radio astronomer at JPL. "These flashes can be anything from explosions on surfaces of nearby stars, deaths of distant stars, exploding black holes, or even perhaps transmissions by other civilizations." JPL scientists are working with multi-institutional teams to explore this new area of astronomy. Lazio is lead author of an article reporting scientific results from the Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array, a precursor to the new array, in the December 2010 issue of Astronomical Journal.

The new Long Wavelength Array will operate in the radio-frequency range of 20 to 80 megahertz, corresponding to wavelengths of 15 meters to 3.8 meters (49.2 feet to 12.5 feet). These frequencies represent one of the last and most poorly explored regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

In recent years, a few factors have triggered revived interest in radio astronomy at these frequencies. The cost and technology required to build these low-frequency antennas has improved significantly. Also, advances in computing have made the demands of image processing more attainable. The combination of cost-effective hardware and technology gives scientists the ability to return to these wavelengths and obtain a much better view of the universe.
The predecessor Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array was also in New Mexico. It was successful in identifying radio flashes, but all of them came from non-astronomy targets -- either the sun, or meteors reflecting TV signals high in Earth's atmosphere. Nonetheless, its findings indicate how future searches using the Long Wavelength Array technology might lead to new discoveries.

Radio astronomy was born at frequencies below 100 megahertz and developed from there. The discoveries and innovations at this frequency range helped pave the way for modern astronomy. Perhaps one of the most important contributions made in radio astronomy was by a young graduate student at New Hall (since renamed Murray Edwards College) of the University of Cambridge, U.K. Jocelyn Bell discovered the first hints of radio pulsars in 1967, a finding that was later awarded a Nobel Prize. Pulsars are neutron stars that beam radio waves in a manner similar to a lighthouse beacon.

Long before Bell's discovery, astronomers believed that neutron stars, remnants of certain types of supernova explosions, might exist. At the time, however, the prediction was that these cosmic objects would be far too faint to be detected. When Bell went looking for something else, she stumbled upon neutron stars that were in fact pulsing with radio waves -- the pulsars. Today about 2,000 pulsars are known, but within the past decade, a number of discoveries have hinted that the radio sky might be far more dynamic than suggested by just pulsars.

"Because nature is more clever than we are, it's quite possible that we will discover something we haven't thought of," said Lazio.

More information on the Long Wavelength Array is online at: http://lwa.unm.edu .

The Long Wavelength Array project is led by the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M., and includes the Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., the United States Naval Research Laboratories, Washington, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.

A team of five students, four competitors and an alternate, from Arcadia High School won the Regional Science Bowl competition on Saturday, Jan. 22, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"It came down to one question at the very end," said Arcadia team captain Derek Chou. "And I remember reading about that very topic the night before!"

When the final buzzer rang, the score was Arcadia 118, and 122 for Troy High School from Fullerton, Calif. The ball was in Arcadia's court and a wrong answer would mean the end of the road for them. With the championship on the line, Arcadia rose to the occasion and answered correctly, earning 10 points for a final score of Arcadia 128 and Troy 122.

"When the moderator said, 'Correct,' our bodies were flooded with epinephrine," said Arcadia High School student Andrew Wang.

What was the question? "In order to replenish the supply of steam at the geothermal plant called The Geysers, which of the following does an underground pipeline deliver? W) wastewater X) river water Y) ocean water Z) rain water. " (See answer at the bottom of this article)

Wang, Chou and their teammates will receive an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., to participate in the National Science Bowl finals. This year's finals will run from April 28 to May 2.

The national competition is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The regional competition is held at JPL, a division of the California of Institute of Technology in California. JPL hosts one of the two Southern California regional events. This year, 23 teams competed at the JPL event.

Each team was made up of four students, a student alternate and a teacher who served as an advisor and coach. The students answered multiple-choice or short-answer questions in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and Earth and space sciences. The competition, which attracts about 17,000 middle and high school students nationwide, is designed to inspire students to pursue a career in science or math.

The first-ever NASA/JPL iPhone application, Space Images, has reached 500,000 downloads, just as JPL prepares to release its newest version of the free app. Space Images features breathtaking views of Earth, the solar system and the universe beyond.

Soon after its release in January 2010, Space Images was selected as a "Staff Favorite" in iTunes and quickly became a top app in the Education category. It has since received praise from users for its extensive and stunning collection of images taken by NASA/JPL spacecraft and for its educational uses.

The new version, Space Images 2.0, optimized for iPad and iPhone 4, brings even more stellar photos to viewers' fingertips, plus videos, Facebook and Twitter connectivity, and a new format that makes it easier to browse through photos at a higher resolution. It will be available in the iTunes Store this spring.

Droid more your style? Space Images 2.0 for Android devices is coming soon.

Visit http://bit.ly/e2yy4y to download Space Images free in the iTunes App Store. Explore more mobile offerings from JPL at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/onthego/index.cfm?cid=500kweb.

NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 8:37 p.m. PST (11:37 p.m. EST), on Feb. 14. The mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comet's surface that occurred following an orbit around the sun.

The Stardust-NExT, or New Exploration of Tempel, spacecraft will take high-resolution images during the encounter, and attempt to measure the composition, distribution, and flux of dust emitted into the coma, or material surrounding the comet's nucleus. Data from the mission will provide important new information on how Jupiter-family comets evolved and formed.

The mission will expand the investigation of the comet initiated by NASA's Deep Impact mission. In July 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft delivered an impactor to the surface of Tempel 1 to study its composition. The Stardust spacecraft may capture an image of the crater created by the impactor. This would be an added bonus to the huge amount of data that mission scientists expect to obtain.

"Every day we are getting closer and closer and more and more excited about answering some fundamental questions about comets," said Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Going back for another look at Tempel 1 will provide new insights on how comets work and how they were put together four-and-a-half billion years ago."

At approximately 336 million kilometers (209 million miles) away from Earth, Stardust-NExT will be almost on the exact opposite side of the solar system at the time of the encounter. During the flyby, the spacecraft will take 72 images and store them in an onboard computer.

Initial raw images from the flyby will be sent to Earth for processing that will begin at approximately midnight PST (3 a.m. EST) on Feb. 15. Images are expected to be available at approximately 1:30 a.m. PST (4:30 a.m. EST).

As of today, the spacecraft is approximately 24.6 million kilometers (15.3 million miles) away from its encounter. Since 2007, Stardust-NExT executed eight flight path correction maneuvers, logged four circuits around the sun and used one Earth gravity assist to meet up with Tempel 1.

Another three maneuvers are planned to refine the spacecraft's path to the comet. Tempel 1's orbit takes it as close in to the sun as the orbit of Mars and almost as far away as the orbit of Jupiter. The spacecraft is expected to fly past the nearly 6-kilometer-wide comet (3.7 miles) at a distance of approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles).

In 2004, the Stardust mission became the first to collect particles directly from comet Wild 2, as well as interstellar dust. Samples were returned in 2006 for study via a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground southwest of Salt Lake City. Mission controllers placed the still viable Stardust spacecraft on a trajectory that could potentially reuse the flight system if a target of opportunity presented itself.

In January 2007, NASA re-christened the mission Stardust-NExT and began a four-and-a-half year journey to comet Tempel 1.

"You could say our spacecraft is a seasoned veteran of cometary campaigns," said Tim Larson, project manager for Stardust-NExT at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's been half-way to Jupiter, executed picture-perfect flybys of an asteroid and a comet, collected cometary material for return to Earth, then headed back out into the void again, where we asked it to go head-to-head with a second comet nucleus."

The mission team expects this flyby to write the final chapter of the spacecraft's success-filled story. The spacecraft is nearly out of fuel as it approaches 12 years of space travel, logging almost 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) since launch in 1999. This flyby and planned post-encounter imaging are expected to consume the remaining fuel.

JPL manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

For more information about the Stardust-NExT mission, visit: http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/

Misting Nozzles | Shade Sail | Misting Tent | Aluminum Patio Umbrella

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully completed its closest flyby of Saturn's moon Rhea, returning raw images of the icy moon's surface.

Pictures of the Rhea surface taken around the time of closest approach at 4:53 a.m. UTC on Jan. 11, 2011, which was 8:53 p.m. PST, Jan. 10, show shadowy craters at a low sun angle. A portrait of bright, icy Rhea also captures Saturn's rings and three other moons clearly visible in the background.

Images obtained by Cassini's imaging science subsystem show an old, inert surface saturated with craters, just like the oldest parts of Earth's moon. But there appear to be some straight faults that were formed early in Rhea's history, which never developed the full-blown activity seen on another of Saturn's moons, Enceladus.

The flyby of Rhea also presented scientists with their best available chance to study how often tiny meteoroids bombard the moon's surface. Scientists are now sifting through data collected on the close flyby by the cosmic dust analyzer and the radio and plasma wave science instrument. They will use the data to deduce how often objects outside the Saturn system contaminate Saturn's rings, and to improve estimates of how old the rings are.

Scientists using Cassini's fields and particles instruments are also looking through their data to see if they learned more about Rhea's very thin oxygen-and-carbon-dioxide atmosphere and the interaction between Rhea and the particles within Saturn's magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble around the planet.

At closest approach, Cassini passed within about 69 kilometers (43 miles) of the surface.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Misting Nozzles | Shade Sail | Misting Tent | Aluminum Patio Umbrella

Astronomers have turned up the first direct proof that "standard candles" used to illuminate the size of the universe, termed Cepheids, shrink in mass, making them not quite as standard as once thought. The findings, made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will help astronomers make even more precise measurements of the size, age and expansion rate of our universe.

Standard candles are astronomical objects that make up the rungs of the so-called cosmic distance ladder, a tool for measuring the distances to farther and farther galaxies. The ladder's first rung consists of pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, or Cepheids for short. Measurements of the distances to these stars from Earth are critical in making precise measurements of even more distant objects. Each rung on the ladder depends on the previous one, so without accurate Cepheid measurements, the whole cosmic distance ladder would come unhinged.

Now, new observations from Spitzer show that keeping this ladder secure requires even more careful attention to Cepheids. The telescope's infrared observations of one particular Cepheid provide the first direct evidence that these stars can lose mass-or essentially shrink. This could affect measurements of their distances.

"We have shown that these particular standard candles are slowly consumed by their wind," said Massimo Marengo of Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, lead author of a recent study on the discovery appearing in the Astronomical Journal. "When using Cepheids as standard candles, we must be extra careful because, much like actual candles, they are consumed as they burn."

The star in the study is Delta Cephei, which is the namesake for the entire class of Cepheids. It was discovered in 1784 in the constellation Cepheus, or the King. Intermediate-mass stars can become Cepheids when they are middle-aged, pulsing with a regular beat that is related to how bright they are. This unique trait allows astronomers to take the pulse of a Cepheid and figure out how bright it is intrinsically-or how bright it would be if you were right next to it. By measuring how bright the star appears in the sky, and comparing this to its intrinsic brightness, it can then be determined how far away it must be.

This calculation was famously performed by astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1924, leading to the revelation that our galaxy is just one of many in a vast cosmic sea. Cepheids also helped in the discovery that our universe is expanding and galaxies are drifting apart.

Cepheids have since become reliable rungs on the cosmic distance ladder, but mysteries about these standard candles remain. One question has been whether or not they lose mass. Winds from a Cepheid star could blow off significant amounts of gas and dust, forming a dusty cocoon around the star that would affect how bright it appears. This, in turn, would affect calculations of its distance. Previous research had hinted at such mass loss, but more direct evidence was needed.

Marengo and his colleague used Spitzer's infrared vision to study the dust around Delta Cephei. This particular star is racing along through space at high speeds, pushing interstellar gas and dust into a bow shock up ahead. Luckily for the scientists, a nearby companion star happens to be lighting the area, making the bow shock easier to see. By studying the size and structure of the shock, the team was able to show that a strong, massive wind from the star is pushing against the interstellar gas and dust. In addition, the team calculated that this wind is up to one million times stronger than the wind blown by our sun. This proves that Delta Cephei is shrinking slightly.

Follow-up observations of other Cepheids conducted by the same team using Spitzer have shown that other Cepheids, up to 25 percent observed, are also losing mass.

"Everything crumbles in cosmology studies if you don't start up with the most precise measurements of Cepheids possible," said Pauline Barmby of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, lead author of the follow-up Cepheid study published online Jan. 6 in the Astronomical Journal. "This discovery will allow us to better understand these stars, and use them as ever more precise distance indicators."

Other authors of this study include N. R. Evans and G.G. Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.; L.D. Matthews of Harvard-Smithsonian and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory, Westford; G. Bono of the Università di Roma Tor Vergata and the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma in Rome, Italy; D.L. Welch of the McMaster University, Ontario, Canada; M. Romaniello of the European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany; D. Huelsman of Harvard-Smithsonian and University of Cincinnati, Ohio; and K. Y. L. Su of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009 and began its warm mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

Radar imaging at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in the California desert on Dec. 11 and 12, 2010, revealed defining characteristics of recently discovered asteroid 2010 JL33. The images have been made into a short movie that shows the celestial object's rotation and shape. A team led by Marina Brozovic, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., made the discovery.

"Asteroid 2010 JL33 was discovered on May 6 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona, but prior to the radar observations, little was known about it," said Lance Benner, a scientist at JPL. "By using the Goldstone Solar System Radar, we can obtain detailed images that reveal the asteroid's size, shape and rotational rate, improve its orbit, and even make out specific surface features."

Data from the radar reveal 2010 JL33 to be an irregular, elongated object roughly 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) wide that rotates once every nine hours. The asteroid's most conspicuous feature is a large concavity that may be an impact crater. The images in the movie span about 90 percent of one rotation.

At the time it was imaged, the asteroid was about 22 times the distance between Earth and the moon (8.5 million kilometers, or 5.3 million miles). At that distance, the radio signals from the Goldstone radar dish used to make the images took 56 seconds to make the roundtrip from Earth to the asteroid and back to Earth again.

The 70-meter (230-foot) Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert, part of NASA's Deep Space network, is one of only two facilities capable of imaging asteroids with radar. The other is the National Science Foundation’s 1,000-foot-diameter (305 meters) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The capabilities of the two instruments are complementary.

The Arecibo radar is about 20 times more sensitive, can see about one-third of the sky, and can detect asteroids about twice as far away. Goldstone is fully steerable, can see about 80 percent of the sky, can track objects several times longer per day, and can image asteroids at finer spatial resolution. To date, Goldstone and Arecibo have observed 272 near-Earth asteroids and 14 comets with radar. JPL manages the Goldstone Solar System Radar and the Deep Space Network for NASA.

More information about asteroid radar research is at: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

Radar imaging at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in the California desert on Dec. 11 and 12, 2010, revealed defining characteristics of recently discovered asteroid 2010 JL33. The images have been made into a short movie that shows the celestial object's rotation and shape. A team led by Marina Brozovic, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., made the discovery.

"Asteroid 2010 JL33 was discovered on May 6 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona, but prior to the radar observations, little was known about it," said Lance Benner, a scientist at JPL. "By using the Goldstone Solar System Radar, we can obtain detailed images that reveal the asteroid's size, shape and rotational rate, improve its orbit, and even make out specific surface features."

Data from the radar reveal 2010 JL33 to be an irregular, elongated object roughly 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) wide that rotates once every nine hours. The asteroid's most conspicuous feature is a large concavity that may be an impact crater. The images in the movie span about 90 percent of one rotation.

At the time it was imaged, the asteroid was about 22 times the distance between Earth and the moon (8.5 million kilometers, or 5.3 million miles). At that distance, the radio signals from the Goldstone radar dish used to make the images took 56 seconds to make the roundtrip from Earth to the asteroid and back to Earth again.

The 70-meter (230-foot) Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert, part of NASA's Deep Space network, is one of only two facilities capable of imaging asteroids with radar. The other is the National Science Foundation’s 1,000-foot-diameter (305 meters) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The capabilities of the two instruments are complementary. The Arecibo radar is about 20 times more sensitive, can see about one-third of the sky, and can detect asteroids about twice as far away. Goldstone is fully steerable, can see about 80 percent of the sky, can track objects several times longer per day, and can image asteroids at finer spatial resolution. To date, Goldstone and Arecibo have observed 272 near-Earth asteroids and 14 comets with radar. JPL manages the Goldstone Solar System Radar and the Deep Space Network for NASA.

More information about asteroid radar research is at: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

More information about the Deep Space Network is at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn .

Soil to be slightly alkaline and containing elements such as magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride these nutrients are found in gardens on Earth, and are necessary for growth of plants. Experiments performed by the Lander showed that the Martian soil has a basic pH of 8.3, and may contain traces of the salt per chlorate Streaks are common across Mars and new ones appear frequently on steep slopes of craters, troughs, and valleys. The streaks are dark at first and get lighter with age. Sometimes the streaks start in a tiny area which then spreads out for hundreds of meters. They have also been seen to follow the edges of boulders and other obstacles in their path. The commonly accepted theories include that they are dark underlying layers of soil revealed after avalanches of bright dust or dust devils. However, several explanations have been put forward, some of which involve water or even the growth of organisms.

NASA researchers believe that palagonite,volcanic soil found in Hawaii, to be very similar to the Martian soil based on its spectra. As a result, palagonite has been selected as the soil of choice for a Martian analog. In this paper, cyclic voltammetry is discussed. Such techniques have never been used in interplanetary missions. Instead methods such as optics, which take up considerable amounts of energy, were used.Voltammetry should be a strong candidate for future missions because it has the ability to speciate, requires relatively little equipment, and uses less energy than more sophisticated devices. The question that arises, however, is whether such techniques would yield viable data. This paper is a pioneer work, attempting to answer that question