ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2012) NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight from California to Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.

The Global Hawk took off from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Thursday and landed at the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., today at 11:37 a.m. EDT after spending 10 hours collecting data on Hurricane Leslie. The month-long HS3 mission will help researchers and forecasters uncover information about how hurricanes and tropical storms form and intensify.

NASA will fly two Global Hawks from Wallops during the HS3 mission. The planes, which can stay in the air for as long as 28 hours and fly over hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet, will be operated by pilots in ground control stations at Wallops and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The mission targets the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change. The aircraft help scientists decipher the relative roles of the large-scale environment and internal storm processes that shape these systems. Studying hurricanes is a challenge for a field campaign like HS3 because of the small sample of storms available for study and the great variety of scenarios under which they form and evolve. HS3 flights will continue into early October of this year and be repeated from Wallops during the 2013 and 2014 hurricane seasons.

The first Global Hawk arrived Sept. 7 at Wallops carrying a payload of three instruments that will sample the environment around hurricanes. A second Global Hawk, scheduled to arrive in two weeks, will look inside hurricanes and developing storms with a different set of instruments. The pair will measure winds, temperature, water vapor, precipitation and aerosols from the surface to the lower stratosphere.

"The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify," said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

This Global Hawk will carry a laser system called the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS), and the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS).

The CPL will measure cloud structure and aerosols such as dust, sea salt and smoke particles. The S-HIS can remotely sense the temperature and water vapor vertical profile along with the sea surface temperature and cloud properties. The AVAPS dropsonde system will eject small sensors tied to parachutes that drift down through the storm, measuring winds, temperature and humidity.

"Instruments on the 'over-storm' Global Hawk will examine the role of deep thunderstorm systems in hurricane intensity change, particularly to detect changes in low-level wind fields in the vicinity of these thunderstorms," said Braun.

These instruments will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation using a Doppler radar and other microwave sensors called the High-altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (HIWRAP), High-Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR) and Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD).

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NASA's Global Hawk mission begins with flight to Hurricane Leslie

NASA's Curiosity is the largest and most advanced robotic rover to ever explore the surface of Mars. The pictures being produced by the mission are also some of the most stunning ever sent back to Earth by a planetary probe.

Take the most recent image distributed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that's making the roundsa shot of Curiosity on the surface of the Red Planet taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from space. The picture shows the rover itself and the tracks it laid down on the surface during one of its first treks away from its landing site.

We've collected that image and others in the accompanying slideshow to highlight the best photos from the Curiosity mission to date. Many have had their color enhanced to bring out details on the Martian surface.

Curiosity landed on Mars in the wee hours of the morning on Aug. 6, 2012 (Eastern time) after a risky descent that had the Mission Control team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. and viewers around the worldon the edge of their seats.

Just minutes after landing was confirmed, Curiosity's orbiting partner transmitted the first dusty thumbnail images the rover had taken with her rear hazmat cameras. Two hours later, during the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's second flyover, high-resolution images came down showing rocks and the rim of Gale Crater, where the rover landed at a site named after the late science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.

There would be many more images from Curiosity in the weeks that followed, including a large batch taken by the rover and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that were released by NASA several weeks ago.

High-resolution shots of Curiosity's thrilling descent, meanwhile, were recently assembled by visual effects editor Daniel Fitch to create a composite video of the rover's harrowing landing on Mars.

Photographer Andrew Bodrov also stitched together many of the Mars images to create a stunning, 360-degree panorama and a new video was released this week showing an animated demonstration of Curiosity's instrument arm in action (below).

For more, check out the recent "Ask Me Anything" chat that Team Curiosity had on Reddit. PCMag's Meredith Popolo was also at the JPL in California covering the Curiosity rover's arrival on Mars. For more, see her tour of JPL. Also check out 7 Minutes of Terror: Landing the Mars Curiosity Rover and How to Hack NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover.

For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.

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NASA Releases Stunning Shot of Curiosity From Orbit

NASA's space shuttle Endeavour will embark on a three-day journey by air this month that will take it from coast to coast on a mission to become a museum display.

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NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour to Depart on Cross-Country Flight for Display

In just one month, it's driven 368 feet (112 meters) on the red planet. Curiosity's slightly zig-zaggy tire tracks were photographed by a Nasa satellite circling Mars and also from the rover's rear-facing cameras.

When the images from the Martian satellite showed the rover tracks, there was much celebration, mission manager Michael Watkins said on Thursday. He said engineers were thrilled by the idea that "we left tracks on Mars that we can see from orbit" because it gave them a visible sense of accomplishment.

Curiosity will not be travelling any more for several days. Engineers will spend the next week checking out its crucial robotic arm. At the end of that arm is a "Swiss Army knife" of scientific instruments designed to test rocks and the chemicals in the soil, Watkins said.

After the arm and its tools are given clean bills of health, the rover will continue on a trek of more than a week to its first destination, a point called Glenelg, where three types of terrain meet. The rover will likely stop on the way to test its first rocks.

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Nasa Mars robot Curiosity leaves tire tracks

NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft May Not Be Near Edge of Solar System after All [Updated]

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NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft May Not Be Near Edge of Solar System after All [Updated]

NASA's Curiosity rover has temporarily halted its journey across the surface of Mars as it tests the tools on its robotic arm, the US space agency said Thursday.

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NASA's Mars rover parked to test robotic arm

[Federal Register Volume 77, Number 173 (Thursday, September 6, 2012)] [Notices] [Pages 54933-54934] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: 2012-21911]

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

[Notice (12-067)]

Government-Owned Inventions, Available for Licensing

AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ACTION: Notice of availability of inventions for licensing.

SUMMARY: Patent applications on the inventions listed below assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have been filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and are available for licensing.

DATES: September 6, 2012.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Robin W. Edwards, Patent Counsel, Langley Research Center, Mail Stop 30, Hampton, VA 23681-2199; telephone (757) 864-3230; fax (757) 864-9190.

NASA Case No.: LAR-17485-2: Metal/Fiber Laminate and Fabrication Using a Porous Metal/Fiber Preform; NASA Case No.: LAR-17791-1: Method for Producing Heavy Electrons: NASA Case No.: LAR-17789-1: Electroactive Scaffold; NASA Case No.: LAR-17799-1: Methods of Real Time Image Enhancement of Flash LIDAR Data and Navigating a Vehicle Using Flash LIDAR Data; NASA Case No.: LAR-18023-1: Landing Gear Door Liners for Airframe Noise Reduction; NASA Case No.: LAR-17555-1: Lock-In Imaging System for Detecting Disturbances in Fluid; NASA Case No.: LAR-17318-1: Preparation of Metal Nanowire Decorated Carbon Allotropes; NASA Case No.: LAR-17869-1: Team Electronic Gameplay Combining Different Means of Control; NASA Case No.: LAR-18016-1: Wireless Temperature Sensor Having No Electrical Connections and Sensing Method for Use Therewith; NASA Case No.: LAR-17681-1: Method and System for Repairing Cracks in Structures; NASA Case No.: LAR-17919-1: Methods of Making Z-Shielding; NASA Case No.: LAR-17735-1: Assessment and Calibration of a Crimp Tool Equipped with Ultrasonic Analysis Features; NASA Case No.: LAR-17967-1: Multistage Force Amplification of Piezoelectric Stacks; NASA Case No.: LAR-17455-2: A Nanotube Film Electrode and an Electroactive Device Fabricated with the Nanotube Film Electrode and Methods for Making Same; NASA Case No.: LAR-17952-1: Multi-Point Interferometric Phase Change Detection Method; NASA Case No.: LAR-17689-1: Negative Dielectric Constant Material Based on Ion Conducting Materials; NASA Case No.: LAR-17857-1: In-Flight Pitot-Static Calibration; NASA Case No.: LAR-17906-1: Abnormal Grain Growth Suppression in Aluminum Alloys; NASA Case No.: LAR-17833-1: Active Aircraft Pylon Noise Control System; NASA Case No.: LAR-17908-1: Photogrammetry System and Method for Determining Relative Motion Between Two Bodies; NASA Case No.: LAR-17877-1: Autonomous Slat-Cove-Filler Device for Reduction of Aeroacoustic Noise Associated with Aircraft Systems; NASA Case No.: LAR-17832-1: Aircraft Engine Exhaust Nozzle System for Jet Noise Reduction; NASA Case No.: LAR-17985-1: An Acoustic Beam Forming Array Using Feedback-Controlled Microphones for Tuning and Self-Matching of Frequency Response; NASA Case No.: LAR-17994-1: Method for Manufacturing a Thin Film Structural System; NASA Case No.: LAR-17836-1: Sub-Surface Windscreen for Outdoor Measurement of Intrasound; NASA Case No.: LAR-17894-1: A Method for Enhancing a Three Dimensional Image from a Pluralitry of Frames of Flash LIDAR Data; NASA Case No.: LAR-17786-1: Smart Optical Material Characterization System and Method; NASA Case No.: LAR-17958-1: Wireless Open-Circuit In-Plane Strain and Displacement Sensor Requiring No Electrical Connections; NASA Case No.: LAR-18026-1: Anisotropic Copoly(imide Oxetane) Coatings and Articles of Manufacture, Copoly(imide Oxetane)s Containing Pendant Fluorocarbon Moieties, Oligomers and Processes Therefor; NASA Case No.: LAR-17638-1: Antenna with Dielectric Having Geometric Patterns; NASA Case No.: LAR-17987-1: Fault-Tolerant Self-Stabilizing Distributed Clock Synchronization Protocol for Arbitrary Digraphs; NASA Case No.: LAR-17895-1: Physiologically Modulating Videogames or Simulations Which Use Motion-Sensing Input Devices; NASA Case No.: LAR-17923-1: A Method of Creating Micro-Scale Silver Telluride Grains Covered with Bismuth Nanoparticles; NASA Case No.: LAR-17888-1: Time Shifted PN Codes for CW LIDAR, RADAR, and SONAR; NASA Case No.: LAR-17813-1: Systems, Apparatuses, and Methods for Using Durable Adhesively Bonded Joints for Sandwich Structures; NASA Case No.: LAR-17769-1: Modification of Surface Energy via Direct Laser Ablative Surface Patterning; NASA Case No.: LAR-17694-1: Fourier Transform Spectrometer System; NASA Case No.: LAR-17831-1: Blended Cutout Flap for the Reduction of Jet-Flap Interaction Noise; NASA Case No.: LAR-17386-1: Fine-Grained Targets for Laser Synthesis of Carbon Nanotubes; NASA Case No.: LAR-17149-2: Mechanically Strong, Thermally Stable, and Electrically Conductive Nanocomposite Structure and Method of Fabricating Same; NASA Case No.: LAR-17747-1: Wireless Temperature Sensing Having No Electrical Connections and Sensing Method for Use Therewith; NASA Case No.: LAR-17993-1: Locomotion of Amorphous Surface Robots; NASA Case No.: LAR-17886-1: Method and Apparatus to Detect Wire Pathologies Near Crimped Connector; NASA Case No.: LAR-18006-1: Process and Apparatus for Nondestructive Evaluation of the Quality of a Crimped Wire Connector; NASA Case No.: LAR-17332-2: Jet Engine Exhaust Nozzle Flow Effector; NASA Case No.: LAR-17743-1: Stackable Form-Factor Peripheral Component Interconnect Device and Assembly; NASA Case No.: LAR-17088-1: Nanotubular Toughening Inclusions; NASA Case No.: LAR-16565-1: Electric Field Quantitative Measurement System and Method; NASA Case No.: LAR-17959-1: Method of Making a Composite Panel Having Subsonic Transverse Wave Speed Characteristics; NASA Case No.: LAR-18034-1: Compact Active Vibration Control System for a Flexible Panel; NASA Case No.: LAR-17984-1: Elastically Deformable Side-Edge Link for Trailing-Edge Flap Aeroacoustic Noise Reduction; NASA Case No.: LAR-18024-1: External Acoustic Liners for Multi- Functional Aircraft Noise Reduction; NASA Case No.: LAR-17705-1: Compact Vibration Damper; NASA Case No.: LAR-18021-1: Flap Side Edge Liners for Airframe Noise Reduction.

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NASA LaRC Notice of availability of inventions for licensing 6 Sep 2012

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

[Notice (12-067)]

[Federal Register Volume 77, Number 173 (Thursday, September 6, 2012)] [Notices] [Page 54936] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: 2012-21914]

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

[Notice (12-064)]

Government-Owned Inventions, Available for Licensing

AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ACTION: Notice of availability of inventions for licensing.

SUMMARY: Patent applications on the inventions listed below assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have been filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and are available for licensing.

DATES: September 6, 2012.

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NASA GSFC Notice of availability of inventions for licensing 6 Sep 2012

[Federal Register Volume 77, Number 173 (Thursday, September 6, 2012)] [Notices] [Page 54935] From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [FR Doc No: 2012-21913]

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

[Notice (12-063)]

Government-Owned Inventions, Available for Licensing

AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ACTION: Notice of availability of inventions for licensing.

SUMMARY: Patent applications on the inventions listed below assigned to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, have been filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and are available for licensing.

DATES: September 6, 2012.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kaprice L. Harris, Attorney Advisor, Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Code 500-118, Cleveland, OH 44135; telephone (216) 433-5754; fax (216) 433-6790.

NASA Case No.: LEW-18340-2: Offset Compound Gear Inline Two Speed Drive; NASA Case No.: LEW-18313-2: Chalcogenide Nanoionic-Based Radio Frequency Switch; NASA Case No.: LEW-18601-1: Inductive Power Device; NASA Case No.: LEW-18566-1: Low Density, High Creep Resistant Single Crystal Superalloy with Lower Manufacturing Cost; NASA Case No.: LEW-18362-2: Space Radiation Detector with Spherical Geometry; NASA Case No.: LEW-18771-1: Integrated Temperature and Capacitive Ablation Recession Rate Sensors; NASA Case No.: LEW-18473-1: Ka-Band Waveguide 2-Way Hybrid Combiner for MMIC Amplifiers with Unequal and Arbitrary Power Output Ratio; NASA Case No.: LEW-18254-2: Simultaneous Non-Contact Precision Imaging of Microstructural and Thickness Variation in Dielectric Materials Using Terahertz Energy; NASA Case No.: LEW-18724-1: Vessel Generation Analysis; NASA Case No.: LEW-18639-1: Atomic Oxygen Fluence Monitor; NASA Case No.: LEW-18042-2: Process for Preparing Polymer Reinforced Silica Aerogels; NASA Case No.: LEW-18076-2: Dust Removal from Solar Cells; NASA Case No.: LEW-18236-2: Polyimides Derived From Novel Asymmetric Benzophenone Dianhydrides; NASA Case No.: LEW-17877-2: Antenna Near-Field Probe Station Scanner; NASA Case No.: LEW-18631-1: Circuit for Communication Over Power Lines; NASA Case No.: LEW-18608-1: Method for Making Fuel Cell; NASA Case No.: LEW-18483-1: Interference-Free Optical Detection for Raman Spectroscopy; NASA Case No.: LEW-18714-1: High Strength Nanocomposite Glass Fibers; NASA Case No.: LEW-18605-1: Electric Propulsion Apparatus; NASA Case No.: LEW-18762-1: Selenium Interlayer for High-efficiency Multijunction Solar Cell; NASA Case No.: LEW-18426-1: Dual-Mode Combustor; NASA Case No.: LEW-18615-1: Purify Nanomaterials; NASA Case No.: LEW-18632-1: Method for Fabricating Diamond-Dispersed Fiber-Reinforced Composite Coating On Low Temperature Sliding Thrust Bearing Interfaces; NASA Case No.: LEW-18492-1: Synthesis Methods, Microscopy Characterization and Device Integration of Nanoscale Metal Oxide Semiconductors for Gas Sensing in Aerospace Applications; NASA Case No.: LEW-18636-1: N Channel JFET Based Digital Logic Gate Structure; NASA Case No.: LEW-18634-1: Multi-Parameter Scattering Sensor and Methods; NASA Case No.: LEW-18586-1: Shock Sensing Apparatus; NASA Case No.: LEW-18221-2: Method and Apparatus for Thermal Spraying of Metal Coatings Using Pulsejet Resonant Pulsed Combustion; NASA Case No.: LEW-18619-1: Method to Transmit and Receive Video on Preexisting Wiring in Fixed and Mobile Structures; NASA Case No.: LEW-17458-2: Compact Solid State Entangled Photon Source; NASA Case No.: LEW-17634-2: Method for Making a Fuel Cell; NASA Case No.: LEW-18649-1: Ultracapacitor Based Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) System; NASA Case No.: LEW-18648-1: Epoxy-clay Nanocomposites; NASA Case No.: LEW-18594-1: Thermomechanical Methodology for Stabilizing Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) Response; NASA Case No.: LEW-18717-1: A High-Efficiency Power Module; NASA Case No.: LEW-18785-1: Prestressing Shock Resistant Mechanical Components and Mechanisms Made From Hard, Superelastic Materials; NASA Case No.: LEW-18432-2: Method for Providing Semiconductors Having Self-Aligned Ion Implant; NASA Case No.: LEW-18604-1: Mechanical Components From Highly Recoverable Low Apparent Modulus Materials; NASA Case No.: LEW-18614-1: High-Temperature Thermometer Using Cr-Doped GdAlO3 Broadband Luminescence; NASA Case No.: LEW-18761-1: Surface Temperature Measurement Using Hematite Coating; NASA Case No.: LEW-18296-1: Modular Battery Controller; NASA Case No.: LEW-18658-1: Levitating Electromagnetic Generator and Method of Using the Same; NASA Case No.: LEW-18248-1: Cellular Reflectarray Antenna and Method of Making Same; NASA Case No.: LEW-17916-2: Carbon Dioxide Gas Sensors and Method of Manufacturing and Using Same; NASA Case No.: LEW-18542-1: Functionalization of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs) by Photooxidation; NASA Case No.: 18477-1: Graphene Based Reversible Nano-Switch/Sensor Schottky Diode (nanoSSSD) Device.

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NASA GRC Notice of availability of inventions for licensing 6 Sep 2012

NASA engineers are delaying a second engine firing in its Jupiter-bound spacecraft in order to check out the propulsion system. The craft, Juno, is on a mission tomap Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields.

NASA says it has postponed a maneuver planned for the Jupiter-bound spacecraft Juno.

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The decision comes a week after Juno successfully fired its main engine. The second engine firing was slated for Tuesday but was delayed to Sept. 14.

After the last maneuver, engineers noticed higher-than-expected pressure in the propulsion system and wanted time to check it out.

The back-to-back burns are needed to put the spacecraft on course to fly by Earth next year and use the planet's gravity to accelerate to the outer solar system.

The space agency says the delay will not affect Juno's arrival atJupiter, scheduled for 2016.

Juno was launched last year. It's on a mission to peer throughJupiter'scloud cover and map its magnetic and gravity fields.

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Why did NASA delay its Jupiter-bound craft's maneuver? (+video)

05-09-2012 14:54 On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 pm EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled away from the sun at over 900 miles per second. This movie shows the ejection from a variety of viewpoints as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), and the joint ESA/NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: : Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: Or find us on Twitter:

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NASA | Magnificent Eruption in Full HD - Video

05-09-2012 10:16 History will remember Neil Armstrong, foremost, as the first human to step foot on another heavenly body. But his NASA family and many admirers worldwide will forever appreciate him for more than just that one, albeit world-changing, accomplishment.

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Remembering Neil Armstrong on This Week @NASA - Video

NASA is now offering museums a choice of freeze-dried and heat-resistant artifacts for their space shuttle-themed displays.

The space agency on Tuesday (Sept. 4) expanded its offer of surplus space food and space shuttle heat shield tiles, which had earlier been open only to educational organizations. Now, museums located across the nation can request the same pieces of space history that U.S. schools and universities have received since the end of the space agency's shuttle program in 2011.

For 30 years, NASA stocked its shuttle pantry with shrimp cocktail and spaghetti with meat sauce, among a variety of other dishes. Dessert selections on the shuttle included freeze-dried strawberries and off-the-shelf sweets such as candy-coated chocolates (otherwise known as M&Ms).

To drink, crew members could choose from coffee or tea, as well as powdered juices (Tang, in its many flavors).

The astronaut food was precooked or processed so as not to need refrigeration and was ready to eat. Meals could be prepared simply by adding water or by heating. [Space Food Photos: What Astronauts Eat]

That said, the food being offered is for demonstration and display use only. "Not for consumption," NASA warned on its website.

The other artifacts NASA is offering, lightweight thermal tiles, protected the shuttle orbiters from the extreme heat encountered during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

More than 20,000 tiles were installed on each shuttle and each tile was designed to survive 100 trips to space and back. Varying in thickness from 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) to 5 inches (12.7 cm), the tiles shielded the orbiter against temperatures as high as 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Both the space food and the tiles are available to eligible institutions on a first-come, first-served basis. Museums and schools must have the proper credentials from their state or federal agencies to qualify.

The tiles are available in three types: black coated, white coated and uncoated. Institutions may request up to three tiles, one of each type, while supplies last. The tiles are free but the schools and museums are responsible for the shipping and handling fees, $23.40 per tile.

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NASA Serving Up Space Food and Shuttle Tiles to Museums

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2012) A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.

The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. The new data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA's Aquarius instrument has been collecting from space since August 2011. Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

SPURS scientists aboard the research vessel Knorr leave Sept. 6 from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and head toward a spot known as the Atlantic surface salinity maximum, located halfway between the Bahamas and the western coast of North Africa. The expedition also is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.

The researchers will spend about three weeks on site deploying instruments and taking salinity, temperature and other measurements, before sailing to the Azores to complete the voyage on Oct. 9.

They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most worrisome effects of climate change -- the acceleration of Earth's water cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation increases, altering the frequency, strength and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with far-reaching implications for life on Earth.

"What if the drought in the U.S. Midwest became permanent? To understand whether that could happen we must understand the water cycle and how it will change as the climate continues to warm," said Raymond Schmitt, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole and principal investigator for SPURS. "Getting that right is going to involve understanding the ocean, because the ocean is the source of most of the water."

Oceanographers believe the ocean retains a better record of changes in precipitation than land, and translates these changes into variations in the salt concentration of its surface waters. Scientists studying the salinity records of the past 50 years say they already see the footprint of an increase in the speed of the water cycle. The places in the ocean where evaporation has increased and rain has become scarcer have turned saltier over time, while the spots that now receive more rain have become fresher. This acceleration ultimately may exacerbate droughts and floods around the planet. Some climate models, however, predict less dramatic changes in the global water cycle.

"With SPURS we hope to find out why these climate models do not track our observations of changing salinities," said Eric Lindstrom, physical oceanography program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We will investigate to what extent the observed salinity trends are a signature of a change in evaporation and precipitation over the ocean versus the ocean's own processes, such as the mixing of salty surface waters with deeper and fresher waters or the sideways transport of salt."

To learn more about what drives salinity, the SPURS researchers will deploy an array of instruments and platforms, including autonomous gliders, sensor-laden buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles. Some will be collected before the research vessel heads to the Azores, but others will remain in place for a year or more, providing scientists with data on seasonal variations of salinity.

Some of the devices used during SPURS to explore the Atlantic's saltiest spot will focus on the outer edges of the study area, traveling for hundreds of miles and studying the broadest salinity features. Other instruments will explore smaller areas nested inside the research site, focusing on smaller fluxes of salt in the waters. The suite of ocean instruments will complement data from NASA's salinity-sensing instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D) observatory, and be integrated into real-time computer models that will help guide researchers to the most interesting phenomena in the cruise area.

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NASA to explore link between sea saltiness, climate

One asteroid down, one to go.

After spending a year gazing at Vesta, NASA's Dawn spacecraft was set to cruise toward the most massive space rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter -- a voyage that will take nearly three years.

Firing its ion propulsion thrusters, Dawn had been slowly spiraling away from Vesta for more than a month until it was to pop free from its gravitational grip. Since its antenna was pointed away from Earth during this last maneuver, engineers would not know until Wednesday how it went.

The departure was considered ho-hum compared with other recent missions -- think Curiosity's white-knuckle "seven minutes of terror" dive into Mars' atmosphere.

"It's not a sudden event. There's no whiplash-inducing maneuver. There's no tension, no anxiety," said chief engineer Marc Rayman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $466 million mission. "It's all very gentle and very graceful."

Launched in 2007, the Dawn mission is on track to become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with two celestial bodies in a bid to learn about the solar system's evolution.

- Chief scientist Christopher Russell

Dawn slipped into orbit last year around Vesta -- about the size of Arizona -- and beamed back stunning close-ups of the lumpy surface. Its next destination is the Texas-size Ceres, also known as a dwarf planet.

Vesta and Ceres are the largest bodies in the asteroid belt littered with chunks of rocks that never quite bloomed into full-fledged planets. As cosmic time capsules, they're ideal for scientists trying to piece together how Earth and the other planets formed and evolved.

During its yearlong stay at Vesta, Dawn used its cameras, infrared spectrometer, and gamma ray and neutron detector to explore the asteroid from varying altitudes, getting as close as 130 miles above the surface.

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Where's NASA Going Now?

Amy Shira Teitel is a freelance space writer whose work appears regularly on Discovery News Space and Motherboard among many others. She blogs, mainly about the history of spaceflight, at Vintage Space, and tweets at @astVintageSpace.

Last week, NASA announced its next planetary mission. In 2016 the agency is going back to the surface of Mars with a spacecraft called InSight. The missions selection irked some who were hoping to see approval for one of the other, more ambitious missions up for funding:either a hopping probe sent to a comet or a sailing probe sent to the methane seas of Saturns moon Titan. Others were irked by NASAs ambiguity over the missions cost during the press announcement.

An artists rendition of InSight deploying its seismometer and heat-flow experiments on Mars.

InSight is part of NASAs Discovery program, a series of low-cost missions each designed to answer one specific question. For InSight, that question is why Mars evolved into such a different terrestrial planet than the Earth, a mystery it will investigate by probing a few meters into the Martian surface. The agency says InSights selection was based on its low costcurrently capped at $425 million excluding launch costsand relatively low risk. It has, in short, fewer known unknowns than the other proposals.

But while InSight costs less than half a billion itself, the total value of the mission by the time it launches will be closer to $2 billion. How can NASA get that much zoom for so few bucks? By harnessing technologies developed for and proven on previous missions. The research, development, and testing that has gone into every previous lander take a lot of guesswork out of this mission, helping it fly for (relatively) cheap.

Aside from the Moon, Mars is the only body in the solar system that NASA has landed on more than once. With every mission, the agency learns a little more, and by recycling the technology and methods that work, its able to limit expensive test programs. This has played no small part in NASAs success on the Red Planet thus far. When it comes to the vital task of getting landers safely to the surface, NASA has been reusing the same method for decades. It has its roots way back in the Apollo days.

Amosaic of Mars Chryse Planitia created from images taken by Viking 1.

NASA first demonstrated how to make effective Mars landings with the Viking missions, a pair of twin landers that reached the surface in 1976. Each was sent to Mars with an elaborate, three-stage system for slowing the craft down for a gentle landing. The first stage was an aeroshell, a case designed to create enough drag to slow the landers descent without building up too much heat from atmospheric friction that it melted the instruments inside. For the second braking mechanism, NASA took advantage of the fact that Mars, unlike the Moon, has an atmospherethey used a parachute. And the final descent was made with the help of retrorockets, which fire opposite a landers direction of travel. They slowed the landers to a gentle touchdown, at which point a sensor in the leg shut the rockets down.

This approach seemed sound, but it required a lot of real-world testing to make sure it would work. One particular challenge was that Mars thin atmosphere meant that the lander would still be falling faster than the speed of sound when the chute needs to deploy. To test parachutes in a hypersonic, low-atmosphere environment, engineers put plentiful Apollo-era funding to good use. They ran a series of tests that sent a payload into Earths thin upper atmosphere with a balloon, accelerated it past the speed of sound, then deployed the parachute. It was an expensive test NASA hasnt repeated since 1968, but it worked and did offer a good stand in for the Martian environment.

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NASA’s Key to Efficient Mars Landings: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle | The Crux

NASA has awarded five-year grants totaling almost $40 million to five research teams to study the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.

The newly selected teams are from the University of Washington; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and University of Southern California. Average funding to the teams is almost $8 million each. The interdisciplinary teams will become members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), headquartered at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"These research teams join the NASA Astrobiology Institute at an exciting time for NASA's exploration programs," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "With the Curiosity rover preparing to investigate the potential habitability of Mars and the Kepler mission discovering planets outside our solar system, these research teams will help provide the critical interdisciplinary expertise needed to interpret data from these missions and plan future astrobiology-focused missions."

The University of Washington's "Virtual Planetary Laboratory," led by Victoria Meadows, will integrate computer modeling with laboratory and field-work across a range of disciplines to extend knowledge of planetary habitability and astronomical biosignatures in support of NASA missions to study extrasolar planets.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team, led by Roger Summons, will focus on how signs of life are preserved in ancient rocks on Earth, with a focus on the origin and evolution of complex life, and how this knowledge can be applied to studies of Mars using the Curiosity rover.

The University of Wisconsin team, led by Clark Johnson, will study how to detect life in modern and ancient environments on Earth and other planetary bodies.

The University of Illinois team, led by Nigel Goldenfeld, seeks to define a "universal biology," or fundamental principles underlying the origin and evolution of life anywhere, through an interdisciplinary study of how life began and evolved on Earth.

The University of Southern California team, led by Jan Amend, will study life in the subsurface, a potentially habitable environment on other worlds. They will use field, laboratory, and modeling approaches to detect and characterize Earth's subsurface microbial life.

"The intellectual scope of astrobiology is breathtaking, from understanding how our planet went from lifeless to living, to understanding how life has adapted to Earth's harshest environments, to exploring other worlds with the most advanced technologies to search for signs of life," NAI Director Carl Pilcher said. "The new teams cover that breadth of astrobiology, and by coming together in the NAI, they will make the connections between disciplines and organizations that stimulate fundamental scientific advances."

These five new teams join 10 other teams led by the University of Hawaii; Arizona State University, Tempe; The Carnegie Institution of Washington; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y.; Pennsylvania State University; Georgia Institute of Technology; and teams at Ames; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and two teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

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NASA Selects Science Teams for Astrobiology Institute

NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft May Not Be Near Edge of Solar System After All

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NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft May Not Be Near Edge of Solar System After All

NASA's Dawn probe has departed the huge asteroid Vesta, its orbital home for the past year, to begin a journey to its next destination: the dwarf planet Ceres.

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NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Says Goodbye to Giant Asteroid Vesta

Students worldwide have an opportunity to name an asteroid from which an upcoming NASA mission will return the first samples to Earth.

Scheduled to launch in 2016, the mission is called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx). Samples returned from the primitive surface of the near-Earth asteroid currently called (101955) 1999 RQ36 could hold clues to the origin of the solar system and organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth. NASA also is planning a crewed mission to an asteroid by 2025. A closer scientific study of asteroids will provide context and help inform this mission.

"Because the samples returned by the mission will be available for study for future generations, it is possible the person who names the asteroid will grow up to study the regolith we return to Earth," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The competition is open to students under age 18 from anywhere in the world. Each contestant can submit one name, up to 16 characters long. Entries must include a short explanation and rationale for the name. Submissions must be made by an adult on behalf of the student. The contest deadline is Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012.

The contest is a partnership with The Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif.; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington; and the University of Arizona in Tucson.

A panel will review proposed asteroid names. First prize will be awarded to the student who recommends a name that is approved by the International Astronomical Union Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature.

"Our mission will be focused on this asteroid for more than a decade," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona. "We look forward to having a name that is easier to say than (101955) 1999 RQ36."

The asteroid was discovered in 1999 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. LINEAR is part of NASA's Near Earth Observation Program in Washington, which detects and catalogs near-Earth asteroids and comets. The asteroid has an average diameter of approximately one-third of a mile (500 meters).

"We are excited to have discovered the minor planet that will be visited by the OSIRIS-REx mission and to be able to engage students around the world to suggest a name for 1999 RQ36," said Grant Stokes, head of the Aerospace Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and principal investigator for the LINEAR program.

The asteroid received its designation of (101955) 1999 RQ36 from the Minor Planet Center, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. The center assigns an initial alphanumeric designation to any newly discovered asteroid once certain criteria are met to determine its orbit.

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NASA announces asteroid naming contest for students