Juno Press Kit

We’re going back to Jupiter next Month.
Arrival July 2016.

–Ben

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/JunoLaunch.pdf

NASA’s Next Mars Rover to Land at Gale Crater

Onto Gale.

– Ben

NASA’s Next Mars Rover to Land at Gale Crater
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s next Mars rover will land at the foot of a layered mountain inside the planet’s Gale crater.

The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch late this year and land in August 2012. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale.

“Mars is firmly in our sights,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “Curiosity not only will return a wealth of important science data, but it will serve as a precursor mission for human exploration to the Red Planet.”

During a prime mission lasting one Martian year — nearly two Earth years — researchers will use the rover’s tools to study whether the landing region had favorable environmental conditions for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life ever existed.

“Scientists identified Gale as their top choice to pursue the ambitious goals of this new rover mission,” said Jim Green, director for the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The site offers a visually dramatic landscape and also great potential for significant science findings.” …

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20110722.html

To view the landing site and for more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

ISS view of space shuttle Atlantis going home.

Cool pics.

–Ben

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ISS028-E-018214 (21 July 2011) — This unprecedented view of the space shuttle Atlantis, appearing like a bean sprout against clouds and city lights, on its way home, was photographed by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station. Airglow over Earth can be seen in the background.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/html/iss028e018217.html

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/html/iss028e018218.html

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/html/iss028e018221.html

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/html/iss028e018177.html

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/html/iss028e018188.html

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/html/iss028e018199.html

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-28/hires/iss028e018200.jpg

More Dawn / Vesta images

Some new pics in.

I like this comparison one.

–Ben

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia14316b.html

more at :

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/index.html

Neptune Completes Its First Circuit Around The Sun Since Its Discovery

fyi:
–Ben

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Neptune Completes Its First Circuit Around The Sun Since Its Discovery

July 12, 2011: These four images of Neptune were taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope during the planet’s 16-hour rotation. The snapshots were taken at roughly four-hour intervals, offering a full view of the blue-green planet. Today marks Neptune’s first orbit around the Sun since it was discovered nearly 165 years ago. These images were taken to commemorate the event.

The Hubble images, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on June 25-26, reveal high-altitude clouds in the northern and southern hemispheres. The clouds are composed of methane ice crystals. In the Hubble images, absorption of red light by methane in Neptune’s atmosphere gives the planet its distinctive aqua color. The clouds look pink because they are reflecting near-infrared light. A faint, dark band near the bottom of the southern hemisphere is probably caused by a decrease in the hazes in the atmosphere that scatter blue light. The band was imaged by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, and may be tied to circumpolar circulation created by high-velocity winds in that region. Neptune is the most distant major planet in our solar system. German astronomer Johann Galle discovered the planet on September 23, 1846. At the time, the discovery doubled the size of the known solar system. The planet is 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) from the Sun, 30 times farther than Earth. Under the Sun’s weak pull at that distance, Neptune plods along in its huge orbit, slowly completing one revolution approximately every 165 years…

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/19

NASA Spacecraft to Enter Asteroid’s Orbit on July 15

Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?

–Ben

NASA Spacecraft to Enter Asteroid’s Orbit on July 15

July 14, 2011 – PASADENA, Calif. — On July 15, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will begin a prolonged encounter with the asteroid Vesta, making the mission the first to enter orbit around a main-belt asteroid.

As the spacecraft approaches Vesta, surface details are coming into focus, as seen in a recent image taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers). The image is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/dawn-image-070911.html.

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/feature_stories/spacecraft_to_enter_asteroid_orbit.asp

Latest from Cassini: Saturn’s Giant Northern Storm Seen Up Close

July 6, 2011

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Last December, a remarkable thing happened at Saturn. A massive, hissing, lightning-producing storm violently erupted in the northern mid-latitudes of Saturn’s atmosphere and grew to gargantuan proportions. By the end of January, it had wrapped itself entirely around the planet, developing an enormous degree of wavy, even sensuous, details, reminiscent of the clouds on Jupiter.

Today, a group of Cassini scientists has published its findings in the scientific journal, /Nature/, deduced from an examination of information gathered by several instruments on Cassini. Prior to the planet’s August 2009 northern vernal equinox, when the sun was shining in the southern hemisphere, the location of all observed storm activity on Saturn was a band encircling the planet at 35 degrees south latitude that imaging scientists had dubbed `Storm Alley’. Well, to our great puzzlement, this new storm — now 500 times larger than any previously seen by Cassini at Saturn and 8 times the surface area of Earth — has erupted at 35 degrees /north/ latitude. The shadow cast by Saturn’s rings has a strong seasonal effect, and it is possible that the switch to powerful storms now being located in the northern hemisphere is related to the change of seasons and the changing position of Saturn’s ring shadow. But why the obvious hemispheric symmetry in storm eruption exists is not yet known.

The storm is also a prodigious source of radio noise, which comes from lightning deep in the planet’s atmosphere. As on Earth, the lightning is produced in the water clouds, where falling rain and hail generate electricity. The mystery is why Saturn stores energy for decades and releases it all at once. This behavior is unlike that at Jupiter and Earth, which have numerous storms occurring at any one time.

Go go …

http://ciclops.org

http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/159/Saturns_Giant_Northern_Storm?js=1

… to learn more about this fascinating and spectacular meteorological phenomenon, to listen to the storm’s electrostatic discharges, and to read an updated Captain’s Log.

(Attached to this email is a press release that was issued a moment ago announcing these results.)

Enjoy!

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/carolynporco

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
CASSINI IMAGING CENTRAL LABORATORY FOR OPERATIONS (CICLOPS)
SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE, BOULDER, COLORADO

http://ciclops.org

media@ciclops.org

Joe Mason (720)974-5859
CICLOPS/Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

Jia-Rui C. Cook (818)354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Dwayne C. Brown (202)358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington

For Immediate Release: July 6, 2011

CASSINI SPACECRAFT CAPTURES IMAGES AND SOUNDS OF BIG SATURN STORM

PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft now have the first-ever, up-close details of a Saturn storm that is eight times the surface area of Earth.

On Dec. 5, 2010, Cassini first detected the storm that has been raging ever since. It appears at approximately 35 degrees north latitude on Saturn. Pictures from Cassini’s imaging cameras show the storm wrapping around the entire planet covering approximately 1.5 billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers).

The storm is about 500 times larger than the biggest storm previously seen by Cassini during several months from 2009 to 2010. Scientists studied the sounds of the new storm’s lightning strikes and analyzed images taken between December 2010 and February 2011. Data from Cassini’s radio and plasma wave science instrument showed the lightning flash rate as much as 10 times more frequent than during other storms monitored since Cassini’s arrival to Saturn in 2004. The data appear in a paper published this week in the journal Nature.

“Cassini shows us that Saturn is bipolar,” said Andrew Ingersoll, an author of the study and a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “Saturn is not like Earth and Jupiter, where storms are fairly frequent. Weather on Saturn appears to hum along placidly for years and then erupt violently. I’m excited we saw weather so spectacular on our watch.”

At its most intense, the storm generated more than 10 lightning flashes per second. Even with millisecond resolution, the spacecraft’s radio and plasma wave instrument had difficulty separating individual signals during the most intense period. Scientists created a sound file from data obtained on March 15 at a slightly lower intensity period.

Cassini has detected 10 lightning storms on Saturn since the spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit and its southern hemisphere was experiencing summer, with full solar illumination not shadowed by the rings. Those storms rolled through an area in the southern hemisphere dubbed “Storm Alley.” But the sun’s illumination on the hemispheres flipped around August 2009, when the northern hemisphere began experiencing spring.

“This storm is thrilling because it shows how shifting seasons and solar illumination can dramatically stir up the weather on Saturn,” said Georg Fischer, the paper’s lead author and a radio and plasma wave science team member at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Graz. “We have been observing storms on Saturn for almost seven years, so tracking a storm so different from the others has put us at the edge of our seats.”

The storm’s results are the first activities of a new “Saturn Storm Watch” campaign. During this effort, Cassini looks at likely storm locations on Saturn in between its scheduled observations. On the same day that the radio and plasma wave instrument detected the first lightning, Cassini’s cameras happened to be pointed at the right location as part of the campaign and captured an image of a small, bright cloud. Because analysis on that image was not completed immediately, Fischer sent out a notice to the worldwide amateur astronomy community to collect more images. A flood of amateur images helped scientists track the storm as it grew rapidly, wrapping around the planet by late January 2011.

The new details about this storm complement atmospheric disturbances described recently by scientists using Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. The storm is the biggest observed by spacecraft orbiting or flying by Saturn. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured images in 1990 of an equally large storm.

For images and an audio file of the storm, visit: http://ciclops.org, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the U.S., England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team leader (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, where the instrument was built.

-end-