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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Evidence

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The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earths orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.1

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Studying these climate data collected over many years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2 Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many instruments flown by NASA. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earths climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.3

Republic of Maldives: Vulnerable to sea level rise.

Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.4

All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880.5 Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years.6 Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.7

The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.8

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Evidence

NASA advertises vacations on alien worlds

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Story highlights NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has produced vintage-style posters advertising trips to new planets Posters evoke golden age of travel from last century with classic art deco graphics and fonts Actual travel to newly discovered planets is unlikely for now as they're trillions of miles away

It does, after all, have two suns.

OK, so a long weekend visiting a planet 1,200 trillion miles away, may not be a realistic prospect just yet, but that hasn't stopped scientists at NASA from dreaming.

To mark the exciting discovery of a slew of potentially distant habitable worlds by its Kepler space observatory, the U.S. space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology has created a series of posters advertising imaginary vacations to some of them.

Rendered in the retro style of classic travel billboards of the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the posters depict these distant worlds as pleasurable destinations.

The image for Kepler 16-b -- previously compared to the fictional "Star Wars" planet of Tatooine because of its dual suns -- shows a space-suited figure basking in the light from the twin orbs overhead.

"Relax on Kepler 16-b," the poster says. "The land of two suns ... Where your shadow always has company."

Although the planet is depicted as a rocky, terrestrial world, NASA says it could also be a gas giant like Saturn with freezing temperatures that would make it hostile to known lifeforms.

A second poster shows an astronaut free-falling to experience the powerful gravity over HD 40307g, a "Super Earth" 44 light years -- or 264 trillion miles -- away.

Another sunny day on Kepler-16b.

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NASA advertises vacations on alien worlds

NASA's wild plan to bring Martian rocks to Earth

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NASA has a wild idea for a mission that will require a robotic tag-team effort, a rocket lifting off from the surface of Mars and a spacecraft that will scoop up Martian rocks orbiting the Red Planet.

Ashwin Vasavada, the new project scientist for NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity project, said scientists are working on a plan to not just send a rover to study rocks on Mars. Vasavada and his team are working to bring some of those rocks back to Earth so geologists can study them here.

Getting those rocks from Mars to Earth won't be an easy task. Vasavada has a plan for that.

Vasavada, a planetary scientist, has been the deputy project scientist for NASA's Curiosity rover since 2004. On Monday, he took over as the project head, succeeding John Grotzinger, who had held the post for seven years. Grotzinger recently became chairman of Caltech's Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences but will remain a member of Curiosity's science team.

"In the future, we'll work to bring [Martian] rocks back to Earth," Vasavada told Computerworld. "I'm looking forward to that. Curiosity is about the most you can do sending tools to Mars. The next step will be to send rocks back to Earth."

To ferry Martian rocks back to Earth will take a multi-pronged plan that might play out over the better part of 10 years.

The next robotic rover is expected to be sent to Mars in 2020, Vasavada said. It is being designed to hunt for signs of past life, as well as to make oxygen and rocket fuel on the Red Planet.

However, it also is being designed to collect rocks and soil samples and store them in a cache. The rover will leave that cache behind as it moves on to conduct other scientific studies on Mars. After that, another NASA mission will send a rocket and a smaller rover to the surface of Mars. That rover will pick up the cache of samples and put them on the rocket, which will launch itself and place those samples in orbit around Mars.

To wrap up the effort, another spacecraft will be launched for Mars that will grab the samples in orbit and bring them back to Earth, where scientists can study them firsthand.

Vasavada said the project is intended to be completed before NASA is expected to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.

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NASA's wild plan to bring Martian rocks to Earth

SpaceX Launches for NASA, No Luck With Rocket Landing at Sea

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SpaceX sent a supply ship soaring flawlessly toward the International Space Station on Saturday, but the booster rocket ended up in pieces in the Atlantic following a failed attempt to land on a barge.

"Close, but no cigar this time," the company's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, announced via Twitter shortly after the unprecedented touchdown effort.

Despite the high-profile flop in the dark ocean, Musk said he was encouraged. The 14-story booster managed, at least, to fly back to the floating platform from an altitude dozens of miles high.

"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard," he said in a tweet. "Bodes well for the future tho."

He's already planning another landing test next month.

Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Motors, maintains that recovering and reusing rockets is essential for bringing down launch costs and speeding up operations.

Until Saturday, no one had ever tried anything like this before.

The modified barge ? nearly the size of a football field ? was positioned a couple hundred miles off Florida's northeastern coast. The uncrewed platform was spared serious damage from the impact, although some equipment on deck will need to be replaced, according to Musk. A recovery ship with SpaceX staff was a safe 10 miles away.

SpaceX's primary mission was delivering more than 5,000 pounds of station supplies ordered up by NASA, including hasty replacements for experiments and equipment lost in the destruction of another company's cargo ship last fall, as well as extra groceries. Belated Christmas presents were also on board for the six station astronauts.

"Hurrah! A #Dragon is coming to visit bringing gifts," Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti said in a tweet from orbit.

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SpaceX Launches for NASA, No Luck With Rocket Landing at Sea

1,000 Alien Planets! NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope Hits …

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NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered its 1,000th alien planet, further cementing the prolific exoplanet-hunting mission's status as a space-science legend.

Kepler reached the milestone today (Jan. 6) with the announcement of eight newly confirmed exoplanets, bringing the mission's current alien world tally to 1,004. Kepler has found more than half of all knownexoplanetsto date, and the numbers will keep rolling in: The telescope has also spotted 3,200 additional planet candidates, and about 90 percent of them should end up being confirmed, mission scientists say.

Furthermore, a number of these future finds are likely to be small, rocky worlds with temperate, relatively hospitable surface conditions in other worlds, planets a lot like Earth. (In fact, at least two of the newly confirmed eight Kepler planets which were announced in Seattle today during the annual winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society appear to meet that description, mission team members said.) [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

"Kepler was designed to find these Earth analogues, and we always knew that the most interesting results would come at the end,"Kepler missionscientist Natalie Batalha, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told Space.com last month.

"So we're just kind of ramping up toward those most interesting results," she added. "There's still a lot of good science to come out of Kepler."

Exoplanet science is a young field. The first world beyond our solar system wasn't confirmed until 1992, and astronomers first found alien planets around a sunlike star in 1995. [7 Ways to Discover Alien Planets]

The Kepler spacecraft has therefore been a revelation, and has helped lead a revolution. The $600 million mission launched in March 2009, with the aim of determining how frequently Earth-like planets occur around the Milky Way galaxy.

The telescope spots alien planets using the "transit method," watching for the telltale brightness dips caused when an orbiting planet crosses the face of its host star from Kepler's perspective.

The instrument generally needs to observe multiple transits to flag a planet candidate, which is part of the reason why the most intriguing finds are expected to come relatively late in the mission. (Several transits of a huge, close-orbiting "hot Jupiter," which has no potential to host life, can be observed relatively quickly, while it may take years to gather the required data for a more distantly orbiting, possibly Earth-like world.)

"Before, we were just kind of plucking the low-hanging fruit, and now we're getting down into the weeds, and things are getting a little harder," Batalha said. "But that's a challenge we knew we would have."

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1,000 Alien Planets! NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Hits ...

NASA, Nissan to make autonomous car by end of year

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The all-electric Nissan Leaf fitted with autonomous drive equipment allowed to park at NASAs Ames Research Center. Nissan

Japanese automaker Nissan and NASA are teaming up to advance the technology behind cars that drive autonomously.

Yokohama-based Nissan Motor Co. and NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, announced Thursday a five-year research-and-development partnership for autonomous vehicle systems so they can eventually be applied to commercially sold cars.

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Auto manufacturers displayed their newest smart car concepts at CES in Las Vegas. Features include smartwatch integration and gesture control. CN...

Nissan is excited about the potential of self-driving cars, which executives say could lead to improved safety, a pillar for future autos along with low emission technology.

NASA researchers will be working with Nissan's research unit in Silicon Valley, they said in a joint statement. Researchers from the two organizations will test a fleet of zero-emission autonomous vehicles that can be used to transport materials, goods, payloads -- and people. NASA says the tests will mirror the way the engineers operate rovers in space from a mission control center on Earth.

They said that the first vehicle of the fleet is expected begin testing at the facility by the end of 2015.

The maker of the Leaf electric car and Infiniti luxury models aims to introduce autonomous driving technology to consumers between 2016 and 2020. Ames developed the Mars rover software and robots onboard the International Space Station.

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NASA, Nissan to make autonomous car by end of year


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