NASA Airborne Radar to Study Quake Faults in Haiti, Dominican Republic

In response to the disaster in Haiti on Jan. 12, NASA has added a series of science overflights of earthquake faults in Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola to a previously scheduled three-week airborne radar campaign to Central America.

NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, left NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., on Jan. 25 aboard a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft.

During its trek to Central America, which will run through mid-February, the repeat-pass L-band wavelength radar, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will study the structure of tropical forests; monitor volcanic deformation and volcano processes; and examine Mayan archeology sites. After the Haitian earthquake, NASA managers added additional science objectives that will allow UAVSAR's unique observational capabilities to study geologic processes in Hispaniola following the earthquake. UAVSAR's ability to provide rapid access to regions of interest, short repeat flight intervals, high resolution and its variable viewing geometry make it a powerful tool for studying ongoing Earth processes.

"UAVSAR will allow us to image deformations of Earth's surface and other changes associated with post-Haiti earthquake geologic processes, such as aftershocks, earthquakes that might be triggered by the main earthquake farther down the fault line, and the potential for landslides," said JPL's Paul Lundgren, the principal investigator for the Hispaniola overflights. "Because of Hispaniola's complex tectonic setting, there is an interest in determining if the earthquake in Haiti might trigger other earthquakes at some unknown point in the future, either along adjacent sections of the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault that was responsible for the main earthquake, or on other faults in northern Hispaniola, such as the Septentrional fault."

NASA Adds Extensive Data to Open Government Initiative Web Site

NASA has contributed a wide range of scientific data to the new publicly accessible Web site "Data.gov" in accordance with the administration's Open Government Directive issued in Dec. 2009.

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the federal government. Public users may search for information by topic or by accessing the data contributed by any of the 24 participating major government departments and agencies.

NASA's input includes timely, extensive, accurate and relevant data about, Earth science and observation research, global change, agency missions, projects and instruments. Data.gov is a searchable Web site providing access to government information through the Raw Data, Tool and GeoData Catalogs.

The data may be read on line or downloaded to improve public knowledge of the agency and its operations; potentially create economic opportunities; or respond to need and demand as identified through public or industry consultation.

NASA products are in the Tool and GeoData Catalogs. Tool Catalog products include planet counter and climate change widgets and various Earth observation and other analysis utilities. In the GeoData Catalog, the agency posted more than 600 datasets across a wide range of imagery, maps, atmospheric, climate, geological and geophysical data. NASA will continuously update and add new data sets as they become available.

NASA's submission of an additional 18 catalogs released today is the first milestone within the Open Government Directive. Over the coming weeks, NASA will release a new Web site and provide a platform for public participation and engagement becoming a more transparent, participatory and collaborative agency.

JPL Scientist Receives American Meteorological Society Honor

JPL senior research scientist Tim Liu has received the 2010 Verner E. Suomi Award from the American Meteorological Society, the nation's leading professional society for scientists in atmospheric and related sciences.

Liu is being recognized for his "research in space-borne measurements of air-sea interactions and the water cycle, and for inspiring progress through interdisciplinary science team leadership." The Suomi Award is given to individuals in recognition of highly significant technological achievement in the atmospheric or related oceanic and hydrologic sciences. The award is being presented today at the American Meteorological Society's 90th Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

Liu, a JPL research scientist since 1979, developed the first credible method of using satellite data to estimate evaporation and latent heat flux in the 1980s, and was one of the first scientists to use a combination of satellite sensors to study the global relationship between surface thermal forcing and ocean temperature response. He has served in scientific leadership positions on a number of NASA missions, including QuikScat, the NASA Scatterometer, Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1, the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission, Aqua and Aquarius. He has served on NASA's Earth Science and Application Division Advisory Subcommittee and various NASA science working groups. He has also served on numerous science working groups and advisory panels of the World Climate Research Program, and on the editorial boards of scientific journals.

Among Liu's other honors are a NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and numerous NASA group achievement awards and certificates of recognition. He is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Meteorological Society. A native of Hong Kong, Liu earned his bachelor's degree (Summa Cum Laude) at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and completed his master's degree and doctorate at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he also began his career as a research associate.

Locating Landslide Risks in Post-Quake Haiti

Landslides are a potential threat for Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake. Mountainous areas surrounding Port-au-Prince may be subject to landslides after the quake shatters the rock substrate and exposes areas to severe erosion. The risk of further erosion and slope failure increases with the subsequent loss of vegetation combined with intense rainfall events that are typical of Haiti’s tropical environment.

Analysis of NASA satellite images showing areas of landslide risk have been shared with regional and international humanitarian assistance groups to assist those agencies with pinpointing their disaster relief efforts and anticipating further damages due to landslides.

The NASA satellite image analysis (see below) was produced by CATHALAC, the Spanish acronym for the Water Center for Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean. From its regional headquarters in Panama City, Panama, CATHALAC is one of the main implementing agencies for SERVIR, the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System for Mesoamerica and the Dominican Republic. SERVIR is supported by NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Since SERVIR’s establishment in Mesoamerica in 2005, the system has served as a virtual observatory of the region’s atmosphere and terrestrial and marine environment. For more information, visit www.servir.net.


NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite with the Advanced Land Imager captured images of Haiti on Jan. 15, three days after the devastating 7.0 earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area. The locations of possible landslide areas (left panel, purple) were identified by comparing this new image with archived imagery. The 7.0 epicenter of the quake is located to the southwest of Port-au-Prince near the town of Henry. Nearby aftershocks ranging from 4.1 to 6.0 are also shown in this image. Regions subject to severe erosion are in indicated in green in the right panel.


A close-up view of the area around Henry, Haiti, showing possible landslide areas (purple outlines) identified in analyses of images from NASA’s EO-1 satellite . This information has been shared with national authorities as well as regional and international humanitarian assistance groups.

Land Ho! Huygens Plunged to Titan Surface 5 Years Ago

The Huygens probe parachuted down to the surface of Saturn's haze-shrouded moon Titan exactly five years ago on Jan. 14, 2005, providing data that scientists on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn are still building upon today.

"Huygens has gathered critical on-the-scene data on the atmosphere and surface of Titan, providing valuable groundtruth to Cassini's ongoing investigations," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Huygens probe, built and managed by the European Space Agency, was bolted to Cassini and rode along during its nearly seven-year journey to Saturn. Huygens' descent marked mankind's first and only attempt to land a probe on another world in the outer solar system.

Huygens transmitted data for more than four hours, as it plunged through Titan's hazy atmosphere and landed near a region now known as Adiri. Atmospheric density measurements from Huygens have helped engineers refine calculations for how low Cassini can fly through the moon's thick atmosphere.

Huygens captured the most attention for providing the first view from inside Titan's atmosphere and on its surface. The pictures of drainage channels and pebble-sized ice blocks surprised scientists with the extent of the moon's similarity to Earth. They showed evidence of erosion from methane and ethane rain.

"It was eerie," said Jonathan Lunine, an interdisciplinary Cassini scientist at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata, and University of Arizona, Tucson, and was with the Huygens camera team five years ago as they combed through the images coming down. "We saw bright hills above a dark plain, a weird combination of light and dark. It was like seeing a landscape out of Dante."

Combining these images with detections of methane and other gasses emanating from the surface, scientists came to believe Titan had a hydrologic cycle similar to Earth's, though Titan's cycle depends on methane and ethane rather than water. Titan is the only other body in the solar system other than Earth believed to have an active hydrologic cycle.

Huygens also gave scientists an opportunity to make electric field measurements from the atmosphere and surface, revealing a signature consistent with a water-and-ammonia ocean under an icy crust.

While the Huygens probe itself remains inactive on the Titan surface, insights inspired by the probe continue and ESA has convened a conference this week to extend the discussion, said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, Huygens Project Scientist for ESA.

"Huygens was a unique, once-in-a-lifetime mission," he said. "But we still have a lot to learn and I hope it will provide guidance for future missions to Titan."

Solar Scientists Use 'Magnetic Mirror Effect' to Reproduce IBEX Observation

Ever since NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, mission scientists released the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system's edge in particles, solar physicists have been busy revising their models to account for the discovery of a narrow "ribbon" of bright emission that was completely unexpected and not predicted by any model at the time.

Further study by a team of scientists funded through NASA's Heliophysics Guest Investigator program has produced a revised model that explains and closely reproduces the IBEX result by incorporating a single new effect into an existing model. The new effect, put forward by the IBEX team soon after sighting of the ribbon, is that the magnetic field surrounding our solar system—called the local galactic magnetic field—acts like a mirror for the particles that IBEX sees.

The results appear in the January 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Jacob Heerikhuisen, a solar physicist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, is the lead author of the paper. Heerikhuisen and his colleagues believe the orientation of the local galactic magnetic field is closely related to the location of the ribbon in the sky.

Charged particles "orbit" magnetic field lines. When they suddenly lose their charge, they fly off in a straight line maintaining their current direction. Only particles that orbit the magnetic mirror, where it faces us directly, can flow back toward us and are captured by IBEX.

These particles originate in our magnetized solar system, or heliosphere—the region from the sun to where the solar wind meets the local interstellar medium (LISM). First these particles lose their charge and fly out of the heliosphere. At some distance they charge again and start “orbiting” a field line of the local interstellar magnetic field, where they get “recycled” by losing their charge again.

Solar physicists did not expect this “mirror effect,” which is "somewhat analogous to exploring an unknown cave," says Arik Posner, IBEX program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "By activating IBEX, we suddenly see that the solar system has a lit candle and see its light reflected in the 'cave walls' shining back at us," says Posner. "What we find is that the 'cave wall' acts more like a faint mirror than like a normal wall," he adds.

What we saw with IBEX is that this “cave” we are exploring apparently has very straight and smooth magnetic walls, being shaped somewhat like a subway tunnel. IBEX can remotely observe the direction of the local interstellar magnetic field and may observe whether it stays the same or changes over time.

Martian Landform Observations Fill Special Journal Issue

Martian landforms shaped by winds, water, lava flow, seasonal icing and other forces are analyzed in 21 journal reports based on data from a camera orbiting Mars.

The research in a January special issue of Icarus testifies to the diversity of the planet being examined by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Examples of the findings include:



-- Valleys associated with light-toned layered deposits in several locations along the plateaus adjacent to the largest canyon system on Mars suggest low-temperature alteration of volcanic rocks by acidic water both before and after formation of the canyons.

-- The youngest flood-lava flow on Mars, found in the Elysium Planitia region and covering an area the size of Oregon, is the product of a single eruption and was put in place turbulently over a span of several weeks at most.

-- New details are observed in how seasonal vanishing of carbon-dioxide ice sheets in far-southern latitudes imprints the ground with fan-shaped and spider-shaped patterns via venting of carbon-dioxide gas from the undersurface of the ice.

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. It is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. The U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center, Flagstaff, Ariz., played a special role in preparation of the special issue, providing two guest editors and authorship of multiple papers.

Suzaku Finds "Fossil" Fireballs from Supernovae

Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-U.S. Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed the explosions. Even after thousands of years, gas within these stellar wrecks retain the imprint of temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface.

"This is the first evidence of a new type of supernova remnant -- one that was heated right after the explosion," said Hiroya Yamaguchi at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan.

A supernova remnant usually cools quickly due to rapid expansion following the explosion. Then, as it sweeps up tenuous interstellar gas over thousands of years, the remnant gradually heats up again.

Capitalizing on the sensitivity of the Suzaku satellite, a team led by Yamaguchi and Midori Ozawa, a graduate student at Kyoto University, detected unusual features in the X-ray spectrum of IC 443, better known to amateur astronomers as the Jellyfish Nebula.

The remnant, which lies some 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Gemini, formed about 4,000 years ago. The X-ray emission forms a roughly circular patch in the northern part of the visible nebulosity.

Suzaku's X-ray Imaging Spectrometers (XISs) separate X-rays by energy in much the same way as a prism separates light into a rainbow of colors. This allows astronomers to tease out the types of processes responsible for the radiation.

Some of the X-ray emission in the Jellyfish Nebula arises as fast-moving free electrons sweep near the nuclei of atoms. Their mutual attraction deflects the electrons, which then emit X-rays as they change course. The electrons have energies corresponding to a temperature of about 12 million degrees Fahrenheit (7 million degrees Celsius).

Several bumps in the Suzaku spectrum were more puzzling. "These structures indicate the presence of a large amount of silicon and sulfur atoms from which all electrons have been stripped away," Yamaguchi said. These "naked" nuclei produce X-rays as they recapture their lost electrons.

But removing all electrons from a silicon atom requires temperatures higher than about 30 million degrees F (17 million C); hotter still for sulfur atoms. "These ions cannot form in the present-day remnant," Yamaguchi explained. "Instead, we're seeing ions created by the enormous temperatures that immediately followed the supernova."

NASA Supports the President's Educate To Innovate Campaign With Summer Of Innovation To Bring Students The Universe

NASA has launched an initiative to use its out-of-this-world missions and technology programs to boost summer learning, particularly for underrepresented students across the nation. NASA's Summer of Innovation supports President Obama's Educate to Innovate campaign for excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education.

The Summer of Innovation program will work with thousands of middle school teachers and students during multi-week programs in the summer of 2010 to engage students in stimulating math and science-based education programs. NASA's goal is to increase the number of future scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, with an emphasis on broadening participation of low-income, minority students.

"This is an incredible opportunity for our administration to come together to address our nation's critical science, technology, engineering and math education needs," said NASA Administrator and former astronaut Charles F. Bolden. "Through Summer of Innovation, NASA is calling on our financial and human resources to align with federal, state, and local governments, nonprofit partners, universities and teachers to expand the opportunity for more of our young people to aspire to and engage in the future prosperity of our nation."

Through competitive cooperative agreements to states, and partnerships with companies and nonprofits, NASA will use its substantial STEM assets -- including the agency's scientists and engineers -- to create multi-week summer learning programs.

"NASA's Summer of Innovation will increase the scope and scale of the agency's commitment to a robust program of STEM education opportunities," said Joyce Winterton, assistant administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Summer of Innovation pilot will infuse NASA content and products into existing, evidence-based summer learning programs at the state level coupled with design competitions and events open to students and teachers nationwide. The program will culminate in a national event, in partnership with other departments and agencies.

NASA will use the Summer of Innovation as a catalyst to expand, align, and strengthen existing state-based networks. Awardees will be expected to implement the Summer of Innovation program and services during 2010 through the strategic infusion of NASA content and products into existing, evidence-based summer learning programs. The pilot program will seek to improve STEM performance for a diverse population of students, placing them on a trajectory to pursue further studies in STEM fields throughout their education.

Contingent upon the availability of funding, NASA intends to competitively select district partnerships in up to seven states to pilot the Summer of Innovation during 2010. Awards will have a period of performance of 36 months. Local programs will be required to develop ways to keep students and teachers engaged during the school year and to track student participants' performance through 2012. Awardees will be encouraged to leverage the unique capabilities and resources of program partners to ensure a sustainable effort following the period of performance.

Nature's Most Precise Clocks May Make "Galactic GPS" Possible

Radio astronomers have uncovered 17 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy by studying unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The astronomers made the discovery in less than three months. Such a jump in the pace of locating these hard-to-find objects holds the promise of using them as a kind of "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth.

A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes. Because only rotation powers their intense gamma-ray, radio and particle emissions, pulsars gradually slow as they age. But the oldest pulsars spin hundreds of times per second -- faster than a kitchen blender. These millisecond pulsars have been spun up and rejuvenated by accreting matter from a companion star.

"Radio astronomers discovered the first millisecond pulsar 28 years ago," said Paul Ray at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. "Locating them with all-sky radio surveys requires immense time and effort, and we've only found a total of about 60 in the disk of our galaxy since then. Fermi points us to specific targets. It's like having a treasure map."

Millisecond pulsars are nature's most precise clocks, with long-term, sub-microsecond stability that rivals human-made atomic clocks. Precise monitoring of timing changes in an all-sky array of millisecond pulsars may allow the first direct detection of gravitational waves -- a long-sought consequence of Einstein's relativity theory.

"The Global Positioning System uses time-delay measurements among satellite clocks to determine where you are on Earth," explained Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va. "Similarly, by monitoring timing changes in a constellation of suitable millisecond pulsars spread all over the sky, we may be able to detect the cumulative background of passing gravitational waves."

The sources Fermi detected are not associated with any known gamma-ray emitting objects and did not show evidence of pulsing behavior. However, scientists considered it likely that many of the unidentified sources would turn out to be pulsars.

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope Discovers its First Five Exoplanets

NASA's Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.

Kepler's high sensitivity to both small and large planets enabled the discovery of the exoplanets, named Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b. The discoveries were announced Monday, Jan. 4, by the members of the Kepler science team during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.


"These observations contribute to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Borucki is the mission's science principal investigator. "The discoveries also show that our science instrument is working well. Indications are that Kepler will meet all its science goals."

Known as "hot Jupiters" because of their high masses and extreme temperatures, the new exoplanets range in size from similar to Neptune to larger than Jupiter. They have orbits ranging from 3.3 to 4.9 days. Estimated temperatures of the planets range from 2,200 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than molten lava and much too hot for life as we know it. All five of the exoplanets orbit stars hotter and larger than Earth's sun.

"It's gratifying to see the first Kepler discoveries rolling off the assembly line," said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We expected Jupiter-size planets in short orbits to be the first planets Kepler could detect. It's only a matter of time before more Kepler observations lead to smaller planets with longer period orbits, coming closer and closer to the discovery of the first Earth analog."

New Video Reveals Secrets of Webb Telescope's MIRI

It's going to take infrared eyes to see farther back in time than even the Hubble Space Telescope, and that's what the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI or Mid-Infrared Instrument detectors will do. Now there's a new short movie that shows what the MIRI detectors are all about and what they can do.

"The MIRI is one of four science instruments aboard the Webb telescope that is designed to record images and spectra at the longest wavelengths that the Webb telescope can observe," said Matt Greenhouse, Project Scientist for the science instrument payload. "The mid-infrared spectrum covers wavelengths in the range of 5 to 28 micrometers or microns (about 10 to 50 times longer than our eyes can see). Light in this portion of the spectrum is invisible to our eyes but is produced by all room-temperature objects and carries key information about the local and early universe," Greenhouse said. Light at these wavelengths is blocked by water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere and can only be efficiently observed using a telescope in space.