NASA-International Space Station

NASA is embarking a new ambitious mission to unravel the sun’s interior mechanisms that might help forecast solar storms that cause chaos on Earth.The U.S. space agency hopes the mission — scheduled for February 9 from Space Launch Complex-41, Cape Canaveral AFS, Florida — will assist understand the causes of extreme solar activities such as sun spots and solar winds and flares.

According to NASA, after its begin, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will spend five years in orbit trying to find out how such solar phenomena are created.Understanding of those activities, the scientists hope they will be able to create reliable forecasts of “space weather” and provide advance warnings of any threat, The Sunday Times reported.

Scientists have long said that solar disturbances on the sun can trigger treacherous x-rays, charged particles and magnetic fields that can disrupt power supplies, communication signals and aircraft navigation systems on Earth.“It is NASA’s first climate mission and it aims to characterise everything on the sun that can crash on the Earth and near Earth,” said project scientist Barbara Thompson.

“We know things occur on the sun which affects spacecraft, communications and radio signals. If we can understand the underlying causes of what is happening then we can turn this information into forecasts.” The key thing about the mission, Thompson said, is that it is not just pure science for its own sake. “There is likely to be a direct and instant benefit for people.”

Orbiting the Earth at a distance of 22,300 miles, the observatory will determine fluctuations in the sun’s ultraviolet output map magnetic fields and photograph its exterior and atmosphere.NASA estimates that the SDO, which experts have linked to a ‘giant microscope’, will convey as much as 50 times more scientific data than any other mission in the space agency’s history.

Each image will consist of more than 16m pixels and will be 10 times clearer than high-definition television. And the quantity of data sent back to Earth daily will be equivalent to downloading 500,000 songs a day from the Internet, the report said. Solar magnetic storms and space weather disturbances have had a number of theatrical consequences over the years. In 1989, millions of people in Canada and the U.S. were left without electrical energy for more than nine hours after a magnetic storm sent shockwaves through the Hydro-Quebec power grid.

Five years later, a geomagnetic storm for the time being knocked out two Canadian satellites and Intelsat-K, an international communications satellite.The most powerful solar storm in history, known as a ’superstorm’, occurred on September 1, 1859. It caused the collapse of telegraph systems in Europe and North America.

Looking for all intents and purposes like a celestial egg after a session in Saturn's skillet, Prometheus displayed its pockmarked, uneven surface for NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 27, 2010.

Prometheus is one of Saturn's inmost moons. It orbits the gas-giant at a distance of 139,353 kilometers (85,590 miles) and is 86 kilometers (53 miles) across at its widest point. The porous, icy-bodied world was initially discovered by images taken by Voyager 1 back in 1980. You could say this latest "egg-cellent" view has the Cassini science team licking their chops at the thought of future Prometheus images.

This raw, unprocessed image of Prometheus [pro-MEE-thee-us] , taken in noticeable light, was obtained by Cassini's narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 36,000 kilometers (23,000 miles).

The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. For more information about the Cassini Equinox Mission visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

After six years of extraordinary exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past numerous months to free it from a sand trap have been unsuccessful.

The venerable robot's primary task in the next few weeks will be to position itself to combat the harsh Martian winter. If Spirit survives, it will continue conducting significant new science from its final location. The rover's mission could continue for several months to years.

"Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We told the world last year that attempts to set the much-loved robot free may not be successful. It looks like Spirit's current location on Mars will be its final resting place."

Ten months ago, as Spirit was driving south beside the western edge of a low plateau called Home Plate, its wheels broke through a hard surface and churned into soft sand concealed underneath.

After Spirit became embedded, the rover team crafted strategy for trying to get the six-wheeled vehicle free using its five functioning wheels – the sixth wheel quit working in 2006, limiting Spirit's mobility. The planning incorporated experiments with a test rover in a sandbox at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., plus analysis, modeling and reviews. In November, another wheel quit working, making a difficult situation even worse.

Recent drives have yielded the best consequences since Spirit became embedded. However, the coming winter mandates a change in approach. It is mid-autumn at the solar-powered robot's home on Mars. Winter will begin in May. Solar energy is waning and expected to become insufficient to power further driving by mid-February. The rover team plans to use those residual potential drives for improving the rover's tilt. Spirit at present tilts slightly toward the south. The winter sun stays in the northern sky, so decreasing the southward tilt would boost the amount of sunshine on the rover's solar panels.

"We need to lift the rear of the rover, or the left side of the rover, or both," said Ashley Stroupe, a rover driver at JPL. "Lifting the rear wheels out of their ruts by driving backward and slightly uphill will help. If essential, we can try to lower the front right of the rover by attempting to drop the right-front wheel into a rut or dig it into a hole."

At its current angle, Spirit probably would not have sufficient power to keep communicating with Earth through the Martian winter. Even a few degrees of development in tilt might make enough difference to enable communication every few days.

"Getting through the winter will all come down to temperature and how cold the rover electronics will get," said John Callas, project manager at JPL for Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity. "Every bit of energy produced by Spirit's solar arrays will go into keeping the rover's serious electronics warm, either by having the electronics on or by turning on essential heaters." Even in a stationary state, Spirit continues scientific research.

"There's a class of science we can do only with a stationary vehicle that we had put off during the years of driving," said Steve Squyres, a researcher at Cornell University and principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity. "Degraded mobility does not mean the mission ends immediately. Instead, it lets us transition to stationary science."

One stationary experiment Spirit has begun studies tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars to gain insight about the planet's core. This requires months of radio-tracking the motion of a point on the exterior of Mars to calculate long-term motion with an accuracy of a few inches.

"If the final scientific feather in Spirit's cap is influential whether the core of Mars is liquid or solid, that would be wonderful -- it's so different from the other knowledge we've gained from Spirit," said Squyres.

Tools on Spirit's robotic arm can study variations in the masterpiece of nearby soil, which has been affected by water. Stationary science also includes watching how wind moves soil particles and monitoring the Martian atmosphere.

Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004. They have been exploring for six years, far surpassing their original 90-day mission. Opportunity at present is driving toward a large crater called Endeavor and continues to make scientific discoveries. It has determined approximately 12 miles and returned more than 133,000 images.

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."

Lundgren says these upcoming flights, and others NASA will conduct in the coming weeks, months and years, will help scientists better assess the geophysical processes associated with earthquakes along large faults and better understand the risks.

UAVSAR uses a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, that sends pulses of microwave energy from the aircraft to the ground to detect and measure very subtle deformations in Earth's surface, such as those caused by earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and glacier movements. Flying at a nominal altitude of 12,500 meters (41,000 feet), the radar, located in a pod under the aircraft's belly, collects data over a selected region. It then flies over the same region again, minutes to months later, using the aircraft's advanced navigation system to precisely fly over the same path to an accuracy of within 5 meters (16.5 feet). By comparing these camera-like images, interferograms are formed that have encoded the surface deformation, from which scientists can measure the slow surface deformations involved with the buildup and release of strain along earthquake faults.

Since November of 2009, JPL scientists have collected data gathered on a number of Gulfstream III flights over California's San Andreas fault and other major California earthquake faults, a process that will be repeated about every six months for the next several years. From such data, scientists will create 3-D maps for regions of interest.

Flight plans call for multiple observations of the Hispaniola faults this week and in early to mid-February. Subsequent flights may be added based on events in Haiti and aircraft availability. After processing, NASA will make the UAVSAR imagery available to the public through the JPL UAVSAR website and the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center. The initial data will be available in several weeks.

Lundgren said the Dominican Republic flights over the Septentrional fault will provide scientists with a baseline set of radar imagery in the event of future earthquakes there. Such observations, combined with post-event radar imagery, will allow scientists to measure ground deformation at the time of the earthquakes to determine how slip on the faults is distributed and also to monitor longer-term motions after the earthquakes to learn more about fault zone properties. The UAVSAR data could also be used to pinpoint exactly which part of the fault slipped during an earthquake, data that can be used by rescue and damage assessment officials to better estimate what areas might be most affected.

After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has chosen the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap have been unsuccessful.

The venerable robot's primary task in the next few weeks will be to place itself to combat the severe Martian winter. If Spirit survives, it will persist conducting significant new science from its final location. The rover's mission could continue for numerous months to years.

"Spirit is not dead; it has just entered another phase of its long life," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We told the world last year that attempts to set the beloved robot free may not be flourishing. It looks like Spirit's current location on Mars will be its final resting place."

Ten months ago, as Spirit was pouring south beside the western edge of a low plateau called Home Plate, its wheels broke through a crusty surface and churned into soft sand hidden underneath.

After Spirit became embedded, the rover team crafted plans for trying to get the six-wheeled vehicle free using its five performance wheels – the sixth wheel quit working in 2006, limiting Spirit's mobility. The planning included experiments with a test rover in a sandbox at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., plus analysis, modeling and reviews. In November, another wheel quit working, making a difficult situation even worse.

Recent drives have yielded the best results since Spirit became embedded. However, the coming winter mandates a change in strategy. It is mid-autumn at the solar-powered robot's home on Mars. Winter will begin in May. Solar energy is declining and expected to become insufficient to power further driving by mid-February. The rover team plans to use those remaining potential drives for improving the rover's tilt. Spirit currently tilts slightly toward the south. The winter sun stays in the northern sky, so decreasing the southward tilt would boost the amount of sunshine on the rover's solar panels.

"We need to lift the rear of the rover, or the left side of the rover, or both," said Ashley Stroupe, a rover driver at JPL. "Lifting the rear wheels out of their ruts by driving backward and slightly uphill will help. If necessary, we can try to lower the front right of the rover by attempting to drop the right-front wheel into a rut or dig it into a hole."

At its current angle, Spirit probably would not have enough power to keep communicating with Earth through the Martian winter. Even a few degrees of improvement in tilt might make enough difference to enable communication every few days.

"Getting through the winter will all come down to temperature and how cold the rover electronics will get," said John Callas, project manager at JPL for Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity. "Every bit of energy produced by Spirit's solar arrays will go into keeping the rover's critical electronics warm, either by having the electronics on or by turning on essential heaters."

Even in a stationary state, Spirit continues scientific research.

"There's a class of science we can do only with a stationary vehicle that we had put off during the years of driving," said Steve Squyres, a researcher at Cornell University and principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity. "Degraded mobility does not mean the mission ends abruptly. Instead, it lets us transition to stationary science."

One stationary experiment Spirit has begun studies tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars to gain insight about the planet's core. This requires months of radio-tracking the motion of a point on the surface of Mars to calculate long-term motion with an accuracy of a few inches.

"If the final scientific feather in Spirit's cap is determining whether the core of Mars is liquid or solid, that would be wonderful -- it's so different from the other knowledge we've gained from Spirit," said Squyres.

Tools on Spirit's robotic arm can study variations in the composition of nearby soil, which has been affected by water. Stationary science also includes watching how wind moves soil particles and monitoring the Martian atmosphere.

Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004. They have been exploring for six years, far surpassing their original 90-day mission. Opportunity currently is driving toward a large crater called Endeavor and continues to make scientific discoveries. It has driven approximately 12 miles and returned more than 133,000 images.

JPL manages the rovers for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about Spirit and Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

A report released on Friday by the National Academy of Sciences claims almost nothing is being done to discover and destroy smaller objects in space that are perhaps a more likely threat that bigger asteroids and obvious threats.

The National Academies report says it is extremely probable that the next destructive impact will be something less than 50 metres (164 feet) across. This happens about once every 1,000 years. The last one hit over Tunguska, in Siberia, in 1908, destructing forests. If one hit a populated area today, it would cause destruction akin to a severe hurricane or tornado.

The term given to space matter that could potentially intimidate the planet is 'Near-Earth Objects' - asteroids, comets or really big pieces of rock that may wander close to Earth. About 6,200 near-Earth asteroids have been recognized, the largest being 1036 Ganymed, which is 20 miles (32 km) across.

Like the moon and Mars, which are covered in craters, the Earth is also often bombarded. But erosion, the association of continents, the oceans and even forests obscure them over time.

Objects one kilometre (just over half a mile) across hit the Earth about once in a million years. Something this big could harm a large region or cause a vast tsunami if it hit an ocean.

Objects of about 5 km (three miles) or larger could kick up enough dust to cause inclusive damage for years, perhaps decades of cold and dark conditions, and could cause mass extinctions.

"Luckily such events are exceptionally rare, the last known being about 65 million years ago," the report reads.

Your own possibility of dying in a large cosmic impact is 1 in 40,000, not because it is likely but because such an impact would kill so many people that it raises the odds. In contrast, your own risk of dying in a flood is 1 in 30,000, while the risk of death from a motor vehicle accident is 1 in 100.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station received a special software improvement this week - personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the ultimate wireless connection.

Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made foremost use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro_TJ, from the space station. Previous tweets from space had to be e-mailed to the ground where support personnel posted them to the astronaut's Twitter account.

"Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"

This personal Web access, called the Crew Support LAN, takes benefit of existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and use the Web. The system will offer astronauts with direct private communications to improve their quality of life during long-duration missions by helping to ease the isolation associated with life in a closed environment.

During periods when the station is vigorously communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. The crew will view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and act together remotely with their keyboard touchpad.

Astronauts will be subject to the same computer use strategy as government employees on Earth. In addition to this new ability, the crew will continue to have official e-mail, Internet Protocol telephone and limited videoconferencing capabilities.

To follow Twitter updates from Creamer and two of his crewmates, ISS Commander Jeff Williams and Soichi Noguchi, visit:http://twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has covered its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first of hundreds it is likely to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light.

The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was revealed by WISE Jan. 12. After the mission's complex software picked out the moving object against a background of stationary stars, researchers followed up and confirmed the discovery with the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch) visible-light telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea

The asteroid is at present about 158 million kilometers (98 million miles) from Earth. It is estimated to be roughly 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter and circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted to the plane of our solar system. The object comes as close to the sun as Earth, but because of its twisted orbit, it is not thought to pass near our planet. This asteroid does not pose any predictable impact threat to Earth, but scientists will continue to monitor it.

WISE, which began its all-sky survey on Jan. 14, is anticipated to find about 100-thousand previously undiscovered asteroids in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and hundreds of new near-Earth asteroids. It will also spot millions of fresh stars and galaxies.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal researcher, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The ground-based observations are partially supported by the National Science Foundation.

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has completed all 30 relay overflights of the Phoenix landing site that were planned for Jan. 18 to 21, and heard nothing from the lander. Additional listening campaigns will be conducted in February and March. The Phoenix landing site will be getting more sunshine during those periods, but the lander is still improbable to be able to reawaken after the harsh Martian winter conditions that it was not designed to withstand. Phoenix operated for two months longer than its intended three-month mission on Mars in 2008.

NASA's Mars exploration rover Opportunity is allowing scientists to get a glimpse deep inside Mars.

Perched on a rippled Martian plain, a dark rock not much bigger than a basketball was the target of interest for Opportunity during the past two months. Dubbed "Marquette Island," the rock is providing a better understanding of the mineral and chemical makeup of the Martian interior.

"Marquette Island is different in composition and character from any known rock on Mars or meteorite from Mars," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. "It is one of the coolest things Opportunity has found in a very long time."

During six years of roving, Opportunity has found only one other rock of comparable size that scientists conclude was ejected from a distant crater. The rover studied the first such rock during its initial three-month mission. Called "Bounce Rock," that rock closely matched the composition of a meteorite from Mars found on Earth.

Marquette Island is a coarse-grained rock with a basalt composition. The coarseness indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. This composition suggests to geologists that it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture. "It is from deep in the crust and someplace far away on Mars, though exactly how deep and how far we can't yet estimate," said Squyres.

The composition of Marquette Island, as well as its texture, distinguishes it from other Martian basalt rocks that rovers and landers have examined. Scientists first thought the rock could be another in a series of meteorites that Opportunity has found. However, a much lower nickel content in Marquette Island indicates a Martian origin. The rock's interior contains more magnesium than in typical Martian basalt rocks Spirit has studied. Researchers are determining whether it might represent the precursor rock altered long ago by sulfuric acid to become the sulfate-rich sandstone bedrock that blankets the region of Mars that Opportunity is exploring.

"It's like having a fragment from another landing site," said Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada. Gellert is lead scientist for the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on Opportunity's robotic arm. "With analysis at an early stage, we're still working on some riddles about this rock."

The rover team used Opportunity's rock abrasion tool to grind away some of Marquette Island's weathered surface and expose the interior. This was the 38th rock target Opportunity has ground into, and one of the hardest. The tool was designed to grind into one Martian rock, and this rock may not be its last.

"We took a conservative approach on our target depth for this grind to ensure we will have enough of the bit left to grind the next hard rock that Opportunity comes across," said Joanna Cohen of Honeybee Robotics Spacecraft Mechanisms Corp., in New York, which built and operates the tool.

Opportunity currently is about 30 percent of the way on a 12-mile trek begun in mid-2008 from a crater it studied for two years. It is en route toward a much larger crater, Endeavour. The rover traveled 3.3 miles in 2009, farther than in any other year on Mars. Opportunity drove away from Marquette Island on Jan. 12.

"We're on the road again," said Mike Seibert, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The year ahead will include lots more driving, if all goes well. We'll keep pushing for Endeavour crater but watch for interesting targets along the way where we can stop and smell the roses."

Since landing on Mars in 2004, Opportunity has made numerous scientific discoveries, including the first mineralogical evidence that Mars had liquid water. After working 24 times longer than originally planned, Opportunity has driven more than 11 miles and returned more than 133,000 images. JPL manages the rovers for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the rovers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers

Scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., are contributing to planned missions to probe the atmosphere and crust of Venus and return a piece of a near-Earth asteroid for analysis on Earth.

Ames has a role in two of the appealing proposals NASA selected as candidates for the agency's next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system. NASA will select one proposal for full development in mid-2011 after comprehensive mission concept studies are completed and reviewed. The final project may offer a better understanding of Earth's formation or perhaps the origin of life on our planet.

Each winning proposal team primarily will receive approximately $3.3 million in 2010 to conduct a 12-month mission theory study that focuses on implementation feasibility, cost, management and technical plans. Studies also will comprise plans for educational outreach and small business opportunities. The studies will begin this year, and the preferred mission must be ready for launch no later than Dec. 30, 2018. Mission cost, excluding the launch vehicle, is limited to $650 million.

"These are projects that motivate and excite young scientists, engineers and the public," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These three proposals offer the best science value among eight submitted to NASA."

The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or SAGE, mission to Venus would discharge a probe to descend through the planet's atmosphere. During descent, instruments would conduct widespread measurements of the atmosphere's composition and obtain meteorological data. The probe then would land on the surface of Venus, where its abrading tool would expose both a weathered and a immaculate surface area to measure its composition and mineralogy. Scientists hope to recognize the origin of Venus and why it is so different from Earth. Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado, Boulder, is the principal investigator.

Tony Colaprete and Kevin Zahnle, both research scientists at NASA Ames, are SAGE science team co-investigators. Colaprete also is the principal investigator of the SAGE Atmospheric Structure Investigation (ASI) and instrument package. The ASI instrument package will measure pressure, temperature and wind as the probe descends from the top of its atmosphere, approximately 93 miles high, to the surface. NASA Ames also is responsible for the SAGE Instrument Control Module, which interfaces with each module and the lander. The instrument package will determine Venus's atmospheric structure, stability and composition, using sensors, including an Inertial Measurement Unit. The unit includes accelerometers and gyroscopes; a temperature and pressure measuring assembly, to measure temperature, dynamic and static pressure and determine the spacecraft's descent speed; and an anemometer to measure surface wind speed.

“We can build a coherent picture of Venus's atmospheric profile by taking direct measurements in unprecedented accuracy and resolution with a unique set of sensors as SAGE flies through the atmosphere,” Colaprete said. “Wind speed, direction and the rate at which the atmosphere overturns are critical to understanding the chemistry of the atmosphere and how it interacts with the surface.”

Zahnle is part of a team that will interpret the abundances of gases in Venus's atmosphere measured by SAGE as it descends to the planet's surface. Zahnle will focus on the presence of noble gases, such as helium and neon, but particularly xenon.

"Noble gases are both rare on planets like Earth and Venus and chemically inert, but they accumulate in the atmosphere," Zahnle said. "This makes them accessible to a probe like SAGE."

Some of the noble gases are made by radioactive decay of rock-forming elements like potassium and uranium, which enter the atmosphere through volcanic eruptions.

"Some noble gases can be used to determine the geologic history of Venus because radioactive decay acts as a kind of clock," Zahnle explained. "Other noble gases are primordial, in the sense that they formed before the planets, and can be used to determine the origin and earliest evolution of planets and their atmospheres."

The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft, called OSIRIS-REx, would rendezvous and orbit a primitive asteroid. After extensive measurements, instruments would collect more than two ounces of material from the asteroid's surface for analysis on Earth. The returned samples would help scientists better understand and answer long-held questions about the formation of our solar system and the origin of complex molecules necessary for life. Michael Drake of the University of Arizona in Tucson, is the principal investigator.

Scott Sandford, research scientist at NASA Ames, an OSIRIS-REx science team co-investigator, will assess and control spacecraft contamination, particularly for organic particles that may appear during the design, construction, flight or recovery of the spacecraft.

While at the asteroid, the OSIRIS-REx will study the asteroid's shape, rotation and other features. Scientists then will analyze the sample to identify the minerals and organics that comprise the asteroid.

"We are hoping to find out what the true composition of organic-rich asteroids are and find out what sort of impact hazards and potential space resources they represent," said Sandford.

Sandford also will help organize and lead a portion of the Preliminary Examination Team that will study and analyze the organic particles present in the returned samples, as well as assess the cleanliness of the sample return capsule (SRC).

"When the SRC re-enters Earth's atmosphere, the spacecraft lets atmospheric air into the capsule," explained Sandford. "However, we don't want that air to also suck in contamination that will ruin the samples."

To prevent contamination, the SRC will be equipped with an air filter to protect the sample. Sandford brings his experience testing filter designs from his work on NASA's Stardust mission to collect comet dust and NASA's Genesis mission to collect solar wind particles.

Sandford also is part of another science team that will study a force that acts on rotating bodies in space, known as the Yarkovsky effect, which can cause asteroids to change their orbits. Data from the mission science instruments can also be compared with data from Earth-based telescopes. These comparisons will help scientists understand the nature of asteroids in our solar system.

"This is a key issue for being able to predict the orbits of asteroids and determine their dangers as impact hazards," said Sandford. "The science instruments also will measure the composition of the asteroid even before we get samples back."

After the samples have been analyzed, Sandford will work with the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, to organize their distribution to various organizations and researchers.

In addition to science team support, the Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA Ames is developing software for the science processing and operations center at the University of Arizona, Tuscon.

If OSIRIS-REx is selected as a mission, NASA Ames also will provide thermal protection systems support by completing heat shield and design testing and verification in the NASA Ames arc jet facilities.

The proposals were submitted to NASA on July 31, 2009, in response to the New Frontiers Program 2009 Announcement of Opportunity. New Frontiers seeks to explore the solar system with frequent, medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations designed to enhance our understanding of the solar system. The New Frontiers Program is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., for NASA Headquarters.

The final selection will become the third mission in the program. New Horizons, NASA’s first New Frontiers mission, launched in 2006, will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in 2015, then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, called Juno, is designed to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole for the first time, conducting an in-depth study of the giant planet's atmosphere and interior. It is slated for launch in August 2011.

NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite with the higher Land Imager (ALI) instrument aboard took a picture centered on Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Friday, January 15, 2010, three days after the earthquake. The image on the left is the entire ALI image. The lower right image is a zoom-in of Port-au-Prince, while the upper right image is the same view taken in September 2008, one week after Hurricane Ike. Important features can be seen in both zoom images. Hurricane Ike unleashed torrential rains that caused severe flooding as depicted (upper right image) in the extreme discharge of sediment at the river delta, just north of downtown Port-au-Prince. The pier in the middle of the 2008 image collapsed during the earthquake and is not visible in the 2010 image (lower right image).

The Huygens probe parachuted down to the surface of Saturn's haze-shrouded moon Titan accurately 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 significant on-the-scene data on the atmosphere and surface of Titan, providing valuable ground truth 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 practically seven-year journey to Saturn. Huygens' crash marked mankind's first and only effort 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 called as Adiri. Atmospheric density measurements from Huygens have helped engineer’s process calculations for how low Cassini can fly through the moon's thick atmosphere.

Huygens captured the most consideration for providing the first view from inside Titan's atmosphere and on its surface. The pictures of drainage channels and pebble-sized ice blocks astonished 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 imagery coming down. "We saw bright hills above a dark plain, a weird mixture 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 comparable 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 supposed to have an active hydrologic cycle.

Huygens also gave scientists an occasion 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 stimulated 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 an exclusive, 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."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. Huygens data was sent to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and was recorded and relayed to Earth by NASA's Deep Space Network. JPL also manages the Deep Space Network.

Dunes of sand-sized resources have been trapped on the floors of many Martian craters. This picture shows dunes inside a crater in Noachis Terra, west of the giant Hellas impact basin in Mars' southern hemisphere.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this view on Dec. 28, 2009. The orbiter resumed making remarks in mid-December following a three-month hiatus. A set of new images from the HiRISE camera is on the camera team's site, at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/nea.php.

The dunes here are linear, thought to be due to changing wind directions. In places, each dune is extraordinarily similar to adjacent dunes, including a reddish (or dust-colored) band on northeast-facing slopes. Large pointed boulders litter the floor between dunes.

The most widespread linear dune fields known in the solar system are on Saturn's large moon Titan. Titan has a very different environment and composition, so at meter-scale resolution they in all probability are very different from Martian dunes.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.

The fault responsible for the Jan. 12 magnitude 7.0 earthquakes that distraught Haiti is visible in images created using NASA radar topography data acquired in 2000.

This perspective analysis of the pre-earthquake topography of the area, created using data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission that flew aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in February 2000, clearly shows the Enriquillo fault that is in fact responsible for the earthquake. The fault is visible as a important linear landform that forms a sharp diagonal line at the center of the image. The city of Port-au-Prince is straight away to the left (north) at the mountain front and shoreline.

Elevations in the picture are color coded from dark green at low elevations to white at high elevations, and the topography is shaded with illumination from the left. The topography in this image is overstated by a factor of two.

Interactive museum exhibits about climate change, Earth science, and missions beyond Earth are among the projects NASA has chosen to receive agency funding. Nine familiar education providers from Alaska to New York will share $6.2 million in grants through NASA's Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums.

Participating organizations comprise museums, science centers, Challenger Centers and other institutions of familiar education. Selected projects will partner with NASA's Museum Alliance, an Internet-based, nationwide network of more than 400 science centers, planetariums, museums, aquariums, zoos, observatory visitor centers, NASA visitor centers, nature centers and park visitor centers.

Projects in the agenda will engage learners of all ages as well as educators who work in official or informal science education. The projects will offer NASA-inspired space, science, technology, engineering or mathematics educational opportunities, including planetarium shows and exhibits.

In conjunction with NASA's Museum Alliance, the grants focus on NASA-themed space exploration, aeronautics, space science, Earth science, microgravity or a grouping of themes. Some projects will comprise partnerships with elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities.

The projects are situated in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and South Dakota. The nine grants have a maximum five-year period of performance and range in value from about $120,000 to $1.5 million. Selected projects work with the NASA Shared Service Center in Mississippi to complete the business review essential before a NASA award is issued.

Proposals were chosen through a merit-based, external peer-review process. NASA's Office of Education and mission directorates collaborated to request and review the grant applications. This integrated advance distinguishes NASA's investment in informal education. NASA established 67 proposals from 32 states and the District of Columbia.

Congress initially funded the Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums grants in 2008. The first group of projects began in fall 2009 in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Vermont and Washington. Congress has enacted funds to carry on this program in 2010, and NASA anticipates selecting extra proposals to fund from those submitted in 2009.

For a list of selected organizations and projects descriptions, click on "Selected Proposals" and look for "Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums (CP4SMP)" or solicitation NNH09ZNE005N at: http://nspires.nasaprs.com .

Asteroid 2010 AL30, exposed by the LINEAR survey of MIT's Lincoln Laboratories on Jan. 10, will make a close approach to the Earth's surface to within 76,000 miles on Jan. 13 at 12:46 pm Greenwich time (7:46 am EST, 4:46 am PST). Because it’s orbital period is almost the same to the Earth's one year period, some have suggested it may be a manmade rocket stage in orbit about the sun. However, this object's orbit reaches the orbit of Venus at its neighboring point to the sun and nearly out to the orbit of Mars at its furthest point, crossing the Earth's orbit at a very steep angle. This makes it very doubtful that 2010 AL30 is a rocket stage. Furthermore, trajectory extrapolations show that this object cannot be connected with any new launch and it has not made any close approaches to the Earth since well before the Space Age began.

It seems more likely that this is a near-Earth asteroid about 10-15 meters in size, one of about 2 million such objects in near-Earth space. One would expect a near-Earth asteroid of this size to pass within the moon's distance about once every week on average. The asteroid does not pose a risk, in fact, stony asteroids under 25 meters in diameter would be predictable to burn up in our atmosphere, causing little or no ground damage.

NASA'S Cassini spacecraft will return to Titan's southern hemisphere on a flyby tomorrow, Jan. 12, dipping to within about 1,050 kilometers (about 670 miles) of the hazy moon's surface. During this pass, the onboard radar gadget will scan Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere, in a quest to learn more about the liquid methane and ethane in the lake and obtain more comprehensive topographical information about the shoreline. Titan is the only other body in the solar system in addition to Earth that is known to have stable liquid on its surface.

This will also be the most southern pass in the mission for the ion and neutral mass spectrometer device, which will probe the composition and density of the atmosphere near Titan's south pole. The atmospheric data collected on this pass will be paired with a similar sampling mission near Titan's north pole during the most recent flyby, 16 days earlier.

Cassini last flew by Titan on Dec. 27, 2009 California time, or Dec. 28 Universal Time. Although this newest flyby is dubbed "T65," planning changes early in the orbital tour have made this the 66th targeted flyby of Titan. This flyby also comes two days before the fifth anniversary of the landing of the Huygens probe on the surface of Titan.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a supportive project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. 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, before being released for its descent through Titan's atmosphere.

Blobs of warm ice that occasionally rise to the surface and churn the icy crust on Saturn's moon Enceladus explain the unusual heat behavior and intriguing surface of the moon's south polar region, according to a new paper using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"Cassini appears to have caught Enceladus in the center of a burp," said Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz and a co-author of the new paper in Nature Geoscience. "These confused periods are rare and Cassini happens to have been examine the moon during one of these special epochs."

The south polar region captivates scientists because it hosts the fissures known as "tiger stripes" that spray water vapor and other particles out from the moon. While the newest paper, released on Jan. 10, doesn't link the churning and resurfacing directly to the formation of fissures and jets, it does fill in some of the blanks in the region's history.

"This episodic model helps to solve one of the most puzzling mysteries of Enceladus," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., of the research done by his colleagues. "Why is the south polar surface so young? How could this quantity of heat be pumped out at the moon's south pole? This idea assembles the pieces of the mystery."

About four years ago, Cassini's amalgamated infrared spectrometer instrument detected a heat flow in the south polar region of at least 6 gigawatts, the corresponding of at least a dozen electric power plants. This is at least three times as much heat as an standard region of Earth of similar area would produce, despite Enceladus' small size. The region was also later found by Cassini's ion and unbiased mass spectrometer instrument to be swiftly expelling argon, which comes from rocks decaying radioactively and has a well-known rate of decay.

Calculations told scientists it would be not possible for Enceladus to have continually produced heat and gas at this rate. Tidal movement – the pull and push from Saturn as Enceladus moves around the planet – cannot explain the release of so much energy.

The surface ages of diverse regions of Enceladus also show great diversity. Heavily cratered plains in the northern part of the moon appear to be as old as 4.2 billion years, while a region near the equator known as Sarandib Planitia is between 170 million and 3.7 billion years old. The south polar area, however, appears to be less than 100 million years old, perhaps as young as 500,000 years.

Craig O'Neill of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and Nimmo, who was partly funded by the NASA Outer Planets Research program, adapted a model that O'Neill had developed for the convection of Earth's crust. For Enceladus, which has a surface totally covered in cold ice that is fractured by the tug of Saturn's gravitational pull, the scientists stiffened up the crust. They picked a strength somewhere between that of the malleable tectonic plates on Earth and the rigid plates of Venus, which are so strong, it appears they never get sucked down into the interior.

Their model showed that heat building up from the interior of Enceladus could be released in episodic bubbles of warm, light ice rising to the surface, akin to the growing blobs of heated wax in a lava lamp. The rise of the warm bubbles would send cold, heavier ice down into the interior. (Warm is, of course, relative. Nimmo said the bubbles are possibly just below freezing, which is 273 degrees Kelvin or 32 degrees Farenheit, whereas the surface is a frigid 80 degrees Kelvin or -316 degrees Farenheit.)

The model fits the activity on Enceladus when the churning and resurfacing periods are unspecified to last about 10 million years, and the quiet periods, when the surface ice is undisturbed, last about 100 million to two billion years. Their model suggests the active periods have occurred only 1 to 10 percent of the time that Enceladus has existed and have recycled 10 to 40 percent of the surface. The active area around Enceladus's south pole is about 10 percent of its surface.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a supportive project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter was intended, developed and assembled at JPL.

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

The research in a January special issue of Icarus testifies to the variety 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 numerous locations along the plateaus neighboring 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 particular eruption and was put in place passionately over a span of several weeks at most.


• New details are experimental in how seasonal disappearance 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 extraordinary role in preparation of the special issue, providing two guest editors and authorship of multiple papers. For more information, see http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, its backshell and its heatshield are observable within this enhanced-color image of the Phoenix landing site taken on Jan. 6, 2010 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

With early spring at the Phoenix landing site comes progressive sublimation of carbon-dioxide frost that has blanketed the lander and neighboring terrain throughout the winter. During the long polar-winter night, atmospheric carbon dioxide freezes onto the surface, building up a layer of ice roughly 30 centimeters (about one foot) thick. In the spring this frost returns to atmosphere gas (sublimates) over the course of numerous months. This image, part of a seasonal frost monitoring series, shows some areas of bare ground are beginning to be exposed. However, widespread frost patches remain in the topographic lows, such as the troughs of the local polygonally patterned surface.

In HiRISE images acquired during the last Martian summer, the solar arrays on the lander were obviously discernable from their distinctive bluish color. For example, see the sub image at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008855_2485 from June 16, 2008.

The springtime picture here has green boxes around the backshell (top), heat shield, and lander (bottom). The solar arrays are not discernable in this new image, probably because the patchy frost efficiently camouflages them. Even when the frost has entirely sublimated, dust deposited during the winter may obscure them. The parachute attached to the backshell is also not obvious in this image, and we'll see if it reappears in later images. Also gone are the dark halos around the lander, backshell, and heat shield, again due to cyclic frost, dust or both. This and future images will help standardize expectations for finding the Mars Polar Lander hardware, which encountered Mars in 1999.

This picture covers a swath of ground about 300 meters (about 1,000 feet) wide, at 68.2 degrees north latitude, 234.3 degrees east longitude. It is one creation from HiRISE observation ESP_016160_2485. Other image products from this observation are available at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-spring.php .

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft.

Galileo Galilei's improvements to the telescope enabled humanity to see Jupiter's four biggest moons for the first time. Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto--the so-called Galilean satellites--were seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter in late February 2007. The images have been scaled to symbolize the true relative sizes of the four moons and are arranged in their order from Jupiter.

Io is famous for its active volcanism, which New Horizons studied extensively. On the other hand, Europa's smooth, icy surface probably conceals an ocean of liquid water. New Horizons obtained data on Europa's surface composition and imaged subtle surface features, and study of these data may provide new information about the ocean and the icy shell that covers it.

New Horizons spied Ganymede from 2.2 million miles away. Ganymede, the biggest moon in the solar system, has a dirty ice surface cut by fractures and peppered by impact craters. New Horizons' infrared explanation may provide insight into the composition of the moon's surface and interior.

Scientists are using the infrared spectra New Horizons gathered of Callisto's ancient, cratered surface to standardize spectral analysis techniques that will help them to recognize the surfaces of Pluto and its moon Charon when New Horizons passes them in 2015.

The star, called T Pyxidis, is set to self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion megatons of TNT.

Although the star is thought to be around 3,260 light-years away, a fairly short distance in galactic terms – the bang from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away the Earth's ozone layer, the scientists said.

Astronomers from Villanova University, Philadelphia, in the US, said the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite has revealed them that T Pyxidis is really two stars, one called a white dwarf that is sucking in gas and progressively growing. When it reaches a decisive mass it will blow itself to pieces.

It will become as intense as all the other stars in the galaxy put together, they said. The Hubble space telescope has photographed the star preparing for its big bang with a series of minor blasts or "burps", called novas.

These explosions came frequently about every 20 years from 1890 – but stopped after 1967. So the next blast is nearly 20 years late, said scientists Edward M Sion, Patrick Godon and Timothy McClain at the American Astronomical Society in Washington

Robin Scagell, vice-president of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The star may definitely became a supernova soon – but soon could still be a long way off so don't have nightmares."

In a new research that involved the mapping of the shape of the galactic dark matter, astronomers have determined that the halo of dark material surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy is shaped something like a gigantic, compressed cosmic beach ball.

This result is significant because it is the first time that the three-dimensional shape of an individual dark-matter halo has been convincingly measured.

Dark-matter haloes account for over 70 percent of the mass in galaxies such as the Milky Way, but this dark matter is hidden; all we see when we look up in the sky is the small amount of stars and gas sitting in the centers of these haloes.

It might not be probable to detect it through normalmeans, but dark matter obeys the laws of gravity and tugs on small dwarf galaxies as they orbit around the Milky Way.

By observing the orbits that these dwarf galaxies follow, astronomers can infer where the dark matter must be using Newton's law of gravity.

While it would take approximately a billion years to watch a typical dwarf galaxy orbit just once around our home galaxy, dwarf galaxies get shredded by tidal forces as they orbit the much more immense Milky Way and leave stars like breadcrumbs along their path.

Using observations of such tidal debris from a dwarf known as the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, astronomers have been able to rebuild the orbit of Sagittarius and derive models for the Milky Way and its dark-matter halo.

But, these models had met an impasse, as diverse parts of the orbit suggested wildly different solutions.

In September 2009, Law and colleagues Majewski and Johnston recommended a solution. By allowing the dark matter halo to be triaxial - that is, to have diverse axis lengths in all three dimensions - it is probable to fit the entire orbit of Sagittarius simultaneously.

The planned solution suggests that the invisible dark-matter halo of the Milky Way can be visualized as some kind of cosmic 'beachball' that has been compacted sideways.

The fact that the 'beach ball' was compacted from the side came as a surprise.
It suggests that the dark matter halo and the disk of stars in the Milky Way are tilting roughly perpendicular to each other.

"We expected some amount of flattening based on the predictions of the best dark-matter theories, but the extent, and mainly the orientation, of the flattening was quite unexpected. We're pretty thrilled about this, because it begs the question of how our galaxy formed in its present orientation," said Law.

This infrared photograph of a region in the constellation Carina near the Milky Way was taken shortly after NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) expelled its cover. The "first-light" image shows thousands of stars and covers an area three times the size of the moon. WISE will take more than a million alike pictures covering the whole sky.

The image was captured as the spacecraft stared in a fixed direction, in order to help standardize its pointing system. The mission's analysis will be done while the satellite continuously scans the sky, and an internal scan mirror counteracts the motion to create freeze-frame images. The team is working now to match the motions of the spacecraft and the scan mirror accurately.

This eight-second revelation shows infrared light from three of WISE's four wavelength bands: Blue, green and red correspond to 3.4, 4.6, and 12 microns, respectively.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu/.

More than 12 billion years of cosmic history are shown in this extraordinary, panoramic, full-color view of thousands of galaxies in various stages of assembly.

This picture, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was made from mosaics taken in September and October 2009 with the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and in 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The view covers a section of the southern field of a large galaxy census called the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), a deep-sky study by numerous observatories to trace the evolution of galaxies.

The final picture combines a broad range of colors, from the ultraviolet, through visible light, and into the near-infrared. Such a complete multi-color view of the universe has never before been assembled at such a level of clarity, accuracy, and depth.

Hubble's sharp declaration and new color versatility, produced by combining data from the two cameras, is allowing astronomers to sort out the different stages of galaxy formation. The image reveals galaxy shapes that show increasingly chaotic at each earlier epoch, as galaxies grew through accretion, collisions, and mergers. The galaxies range from the mature spirals and ellipticals in the foreground, to smaller, fainter, irregularly shaped galaxies, most of which are farther away, and therefore existed farther back in time. These smaller galaxies are considered the building blocks of the bigger galaxies we see today.

Astronomers are using this multi-color panorama to trace many details of galaxy evolution over cosmic time, with the star-formation rate in galaxies, the rate of mergers among galaxies, and the abundance of weak active galactic nuclei.

The picture shows a rich tapestry of 7,500 galaxies stretching back through most of the universe's history. The closest galaxies seen in the foreground emitted their experiential light about a billion years ago. The farthest galaxies, a few of the very faint red specks, are seen as they appeared more than 13 billion years ago, or roughly 650 million years after the Big Bang. This mosaic spans a slice of space that is equal to about a third of the diameter of the full Moon (10 arc minutes).

The new Hubble vision highlights a wide variety of stages in the galaxy assembly process. Ultraviolet light taken by WFC3 shows the blue glow of hot, young stars in galaxies teeming with star birth. The orange light reveals the final swelling of massive galaxies about 8 to 10 billion years ago. The near-infrared light displays the red glow of very distant galaxies -- in a little cases as far as 12 billion to 13 billion light-years away-whose light has been stretched, like a toy Slinky, from ultraviolet light to longer -- wavelength infrared light due to the expansion of the universe.

In this determined use of Hubble's observing time, astronomers used 100 Hubble orbits to make the ACS optical observations of this slice of the GOODS field and 104 orbits to make the WFC3 ultraviolet and near-infrared exposures. WFC3 peered deeper into the universe in this study than equal near-infrared observations from ground-based telescopes. This set of exceptional new Hubble observations reveals galaxies to about 27th magnitude in brightness.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a scheme of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the organization of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. in Washington.

Most searches for planets around other stars, also identified as exoplanets, focus on sun-like stars. Those searches have confirmed successful, turning up more than 400 alien worlds. However, sun-like stars aren't the only possible homes for planets. New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Two Micron All-Sky Survey confirms that planet configuration is a natural by-product of star formation, even around stars much heftier than the sun.

For more details, please go to http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2010/pr201001.html .

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured an action-packed image of the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud, a tiny galaxy that looks like a wispy cloud when seen from Earth.

From Spitzer's perch up in space, the galaxy's clouds of dust and stars come into clear vision. The telescope's infrared vision reveals choppy heaps of recycled stardust -- dust that is being soaked up by new star systems and blown out by old ones.

To some people, the new view might look like a sea creature, or even a Rorschach inkblot test. But to astronomers, it offers a exclusive opportunity to study the whole life cycle of stars close-up. The image is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/AAS and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/aas .

"It's quite the treasure trove," said Karl Gordon, the principal researcher of the newest Spitzer observations at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. "Because this galaxy is so close and comparatively large, we can study all the different stages and facets of how stars form in one environment."

The Small Magellanic Cloud, and its bigger sister galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, are named after the seafaring explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who documented them while circling the globe nearly 500 years ago. From Earth's southern hemisphere, they can emerge as wispy clouds. The Small Magellanic Cloud is the farther of the pair, at 200,000 light-years away.

Recent research has exposed that the galaxies may not, as previously suspected, orbit around the Milky Way. Instead, they are thought to be simply sailing by, destined to go their own way. Astronomers say the two galaxies, which are both less evolved than a galaxy like ours, were triggered to generate bursts of new stars by gravitational interactions with the Milky Way and with each other. In fact, the Large Magellanic Cloud may ultimately consume its smaller companion.

Gordon and his team are concerned in the Small Magellanic Cloud not only because it is so close and compact, but also because it is very similar to young galaxies thought to populate the universe billions of years ago. The Small Magellanic Cloud has only one-fifth the amount of heavier elements, such as carbon, enclosed in the Milky Way, which means that its stars haven't been around long enough to pump large amounts of these elements back into their environment. Such elements were essential for life to form in our solar system.

Studies of the Small Magellanic Cloud therefore offer a glance into the different types of environments in which stars form.

The new Spitzer observations were accessible today at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington. They expose the galaxy's youngest stars embedded in thick dust, in addition to the older stars, which spit the dust out. Taken together with visible-light explanation, these Spitzer data help provide a census of the whole stellar population.

"With Spitzer, we are indicative how to best calculate the numbers of new stars that are forming right now," said Gordon. "Observations in the infrared give us a outlook into the birthplace of stars, unveiling the dust-enshrouded locations where stars have just formed."

Infrared light is color-coded in the new image, so that blue shows older stars, green shows organic dust and red highlights dust-enshrouded star configuration. Light determined in blue has a wavelength of 3.6 microns; green is 8.0 microns; and red is 24 microns. This picture was taken before Spitzer ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009 and began its "warm" mission.

Other collaborators comprise: M. Meixner, M, Sewilo and B. Shiao of the Space Telescope Science Institute; M. Meade, B. Babler, S. Bracker of the University of Wisconsin at Madison; C. Engelbracht, M. Block, K. Misselt of the University of Arizona, Tucson; R. Indebetouw of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; and J. Hora and T. Robitaille of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.

The image includes Spitzer explanation taken formerly by a team led by Alberto Bolatto of the University of Maryland, College Park.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope assignment for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

For almost two centuries, humans have looked up at a bright star called Epsilon Aurigae and watched with their own eyes as it seemed to disappear into the night sky, slowly fading before coming back to life again. Today, as another dimming of the system is underway, mysteries about the star persist. Though astronomers know that Epsilon Aurigae is eclipsed by a dark companion object every 27 years, the nature of both the star and object has remained unclear.

Now, new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope -- in combination with archived ultraviolet, visible and other infrared data -- point to one of two competing theories, and a likely solution to this age-old puzzle. One theory holds that the bright star is a massive supergiant, periodically eclipsed by two tight-knit stars inside a swirling, dusty disk. The second theory holds that the bright star is in fact a dying star with a lot less mass, periodically eclipsed by just a single star inside a disk. The Spitzer data strongly support the latter scenario.

"We've really shifted the balance of the two competing theories," said Donald Hoard of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Now we can get busy working out all the details." Hoard presented the results today at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington.

Epsilon Aurigae can be seen at night from the northern hemisphere with the naked eye, even in some urban areas. Last August, it began its roughly two-year dimming, an event that happens like clockwork every 27.1 years and results in the star fading in brightness by one-half. Professional and amateur astronomers around the globe are watching, and the International Year of Astronomy 2009 marked the eclipse as a flagship "citizen science" event. More information is at http://www.citizensky.org .

Astronomers study these eclipsing binary events to learn more about the evolution of stars. Because one star passes in front of another, additional information can be gleaned about the nature of the stars. In the case of Epsilon Aurigae, what could have been a simple calculation has instead left astronomers endlessly scratching their heads. Certain aspects of the event, for example the duration of the eclipse, and the presence of "wiggles" in the brightness of the system during the eclipse, have not fit nicely into models. Theories have been put forth to explain what's going on, some quite elaborate, but none with a perfect fit.

The main stumper is the nature of the naked-eye star -- the one that dims and brightens. Its spectral features indicate that it's a monstrous star, called an F supergiant, with 20 times the mass, and up to 300 times the diameter, of our sun. But, in order for this theory to be true, astronomers had to come up with elaborate scenarios to make sense of the eclipse observations. They said that the eclipsing, companion star must actually be two so-called B stars surrounded by an orbiting disk of dusty debris. And some scenarios were even more exotic, calling for black holes and massive planets.

A competing theory proposed that the bright star was actually a less massive, dying star. But this model had holes too. There was no simple solution.

Hoard became interested in the problem from a technological standpoint. He wanted to see if Spitzer, whose delicate infrared arrays are too sensitive to observe the bright star directly, could be coaxed to observe it using a clever trick. "We pointed the star at the corner of four of Spitzer's pixels, instead of directly at one, to effectively reduce its sensitivity." What's more, the observation used exposures lasting only one-hundredth of a second -- the fastest that images can be obtained by Spitzer.

The resulting information, in combination with past Spitzer observations, represents the most complete infrared data set for the star to date. They confirm the presence of the companion star's disk, without a doubt, and establish the particle sizes as being relatively large like gravel rather than like fine dust.

But Hoard and his colleagues were most excited about nailing down the radius of the disk to approximately four times the distance between Earth and the sun. This enabled the team to create a multi-wavelength model that explained all the features of the system. If they assumed the F star was actually a much less massive, dying star, and they also assumed that the eclipsing object was a single B star embedded in the dusty disk, everything snapped together.

"It was amazing how everything fell into place so neatly," said Steve Howell of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "All the features of this system are interlinked, so if you tinker with one, you have to change another. It's been hard to get everything to fall together perfectly until now."

According to the astronomers, there are still many more details to figure out. The ongoing observations of the current eclipse should provide the final clues needed to put this mystery of the night sky to rest.

R.E. Stencel of the University of Denver, Colo., is also a collaborator on this research. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

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.

For a more detailed look at radio wavelengths, Ray organized the Fermi Pulsar Search Consortium and recruited a handful of radio astronomers with expertise in using five of the world's largest radio telescopes -- the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in W.Va., the Parkes Observatory in Australia, the Nancay Radio Telescope in France, the Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany and the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico.

After studying approximately 100 targets, and with a computationally intensive data analysis still under way, the discoveries have started to pour in."Other surveys took a decade to find as many of these pulsars as we have," said Ransom, who led one of the discovery groups. "Having Fermi tell us where to look is a huge advantage."

Four of the new objects are "black widow" pulsars, so called because radiation from the recycled pulsar is destroying the companion star that helped spin it up.

"Some of these stars are whittled down to masses equivalent to tens of Jupiters," said Ray. "We've doubled the known number of these systems in the galaxy's disk, and that will help us better understand how they evolve."

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.