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By NASA
4 min read
NASA Orbiter Snaps Stunning Views of Mars Horizon
This unusual view of the horizon of Mars was captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter using its THEMIS camera, in an operation that took engineers three months to plan. It’s taken from about 250 miles above the Martian surface – about the same altitude at which the International Space Station orbits Earth.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU The Odyssey orbiter captured clouds and dust in the Red Planet’s skies, along with one of its two tiny moons.
Astronauts often react with awe when they see the curvature of the Earth below the International Space Station. Now Mars scientists are getting a taste of what that’s like, thanks to NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, which completed its 22nd year at the Red Planet last month.
The spacecraft captured a series of panoramic images that showcases the curving Martian landscape below gauzy layers of clouds and dust. Stitched end to end, the 10 images offer not only a fresh, and stunning, view of Mars, but also one that will help scientists gain new insights into the Martian atmosphere.
The spacecraft took the images in May from an altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers) – the same altitude at which the space station flies above Earth.
Laura Kerber, deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, explains how and why the spacecraft captured a view of the Red Planet similar to the International Space Station’s view of Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech “If there were astronauts in orbit over Mars, this is the perspective they would have,” said Jonathon Hill of Arizona State University, operations lead for Odyssey’s camera, called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS. “No Mars spacecraft has ever had this kind of view before.”
How It Was Done
The reason why the view is so uncommon is because of the challenges involved in creating it. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission, and Lockheed Martin Space, which built Odyssey and co-leads day-to-day operations, spent three months planning the THEMIS observations. The infrared camera’s sensitivity to warmth enables it to map ice, rock, sand, and dust, along with temperature changes, on the planet’s surface.
It can also measure how much water ice or dust is in the atmosphere, but only in a narrow column directly below the spacecraft. That’s because THEMIS is fixed in place on the orbiter; it usually points straight down.
The mission wanted a more expansive view of the atmosphere. Seeing where those layers of water-ice clouds and dust are in relation to each other – whether there’s one layer or several stacked on top of each other – helps scientists improve models of Mars’ atmosphere.
“I think of it as viewing a cross-section, a slice through the atmosphere,” said Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey’s project scientist at JPL. “There’s a lot of detail you can’t see from above, which is how THEMIS normally makes these measurements.
NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter used its THEMIS camera to capture this series of images of Phobos, one of the Red Planet’s two tiny moons.NASA/JPL-Caltech Because THEMIS can’t pivot, adjusting the angle of the camera requires adjusting the position of the whole spacecraft. In this case, the team needed to rotate the orbiter almost 90 degrees while making sure the Sun would still shine on the spacecraft’s solar panels but not on sensitive equipment that could overheat. The easiest orientation turned out to be one where the orbiter’s antenna pointed away from Earth. That meant the team was out of communication with Odyssey for several hours until the operation was complete.
The Odyssey mission hopes to take similar images in the future, capturing the Martian atmosphere across multiple seasons.
Over the Moon
To make the most of their effort, the mission also captured imagery of Mars’ little moon Phobos. This marks the seventh time in 22 years that the orbiter has pointed THEMIS at the moon in order to measure temperature variations across its surface.
“We got a different angle and lighting conditions of Phobos than we’re used to,” Hill said. “That makes it a unique part of our Phobos dataset.”
The new imagery provides insight into the composition and physical properties of the moon. Further study could help settle a debate over whether Phobos, which measures about 16 miles (25 kilometers) across, is a captured asteroid or an ancient chunk of Mars that was blasted off the surface by an impact.
NASA is participating with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in a sample return mission to Phobos and its sister moon, Deimos, called Mars Moon eXplorer, or MMX. Odyssey’s Phobos imagery will be helpful to scientists working on both Odyssey as well as MMX.
More About the Mission
THEMIS was built and is operated by Arizona State University in Tempe. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.
For more information about Odyssey:
https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 28, 2023 Related Terms
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7 min read Science on Station: November 2023
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA’s Dragonfly to Proceed with Final Mission Design Work
Artist’s Impression: Dragonfly Departs and heads off toward its next landing spot on Titan. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben NASA’s Dragonfly mission has been authorized to proceed with work on final mission design and fabrication – known as Phase C – during fiscal year (FY) 2024. The agency is postponing formal confirmation of the mission (including its total cost and schedule) until mid-2024, following the release of the FY 2025 President’s Budget Request.
Earlier this year, Dragonfly – a mission to send a rotorcraft to explore Saturn’s moon Titan – passed all the success criteria of its Preliminary Design Review. The Dragonfly team conducted a re-plan of the mission based on expected funding available in FY 2024 and estimate a revised launch readiness date of July 2028. The Agency will officially assess the mission’s launch readiness date in mid-2024 at the Agency Program Management Council.
“The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “I am proud of this team and their ability to keep all aspects of the mission moving toward confirmation.”
Dragonfly takes a novel approach to planetary exploration, for the first time employing a rotorcraft-lander to travel between and sample diverse sites on Titan. Dragonfly’s goal is to characterize the habitability of the moon’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an environment where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and even search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Titan.
Dragonfly is being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which manages the mission for NASA. The team includes key partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado; Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company; NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California; NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania; Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California; Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, California; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), the French space agency, in Paris, France; DLR (German Aerospace Center) in Cologne, Germany; and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in Tokyo, Japan. Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate.
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Last Updated Nov 28, 2023 Editor WILLIAM KEETER Related Terms
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By NASA
7 min read
NASA’s Fermi Mission Nets 300 Gamma-Ray Pulsars … and Counting
A new catalog produced by a French-led international team of astronomers shows that NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 294 gamma-ray-emitting pulsars, while another 34 suspects await confirmation. This is 27 times the number known before the mission launched in 2008.
This visualization shows 294 gamma-ray pulsars, first plotted on an image of the entire starry sky as seen from Earth and then transitioning to a view from above our galaxy. The symbols show different types of pulsars. Young pulsars blink in real time except for the Crab, which pulses slower than in real time because its rate is only slightly lower than the video’s frame rate. Millisecond pulsars remain steady, pulsing too quickly to see. The Crab, Vela, and Geminga were among the 11 gamma-ray pulsars known before Fermi launched. Other notable objects are also highlighted. Distances are shown in light-years (abbreviated ly). Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center “Pulsars touch on a wide range of astrophysics research, from cosmic rays and stellar evolution to the search for gravitational waves and dark matter,” said study coordinator David Smith, research director at the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory in Gironde, France, which is part of CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research). “This new catalog compiles full information on all known gamma-ray pulsars in an effort to promote new avenues of exploration.”
The catalog was published on Monday, Nov. 27, in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
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Narrow beams of energy emerge from hot spots on the surface of a neutron star in this artist’s concept. When one of these beams sweeps past Earth, astronomers detect a pulse of light. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab Pulsars are a type of neutron star, the city-sized leftover of a massive sun that has exploded as a supernova. Neutron stars, containing more mass than our Sun in a ball less than 17 miles wide, represent the densest matter astronomers can study directly. They possess strong magnetic fields, produce streams of energetic particles, and spin quickly – 716 times a second for the fastest known. Pulsars, in addition, emit narrow beams of energy that swing lighthouse-like through space as the objects rotate. When one of these beams sweeps past Earth, astronomers detect a pulse of emission.
The new catalog represents the work of 170 scientists across the globe. A dozen radio telescopes carry out regular monitoring of thousands of pulsars, and radio astronomers search for new pulsars within gamma-ray sources discovered by Fermi. Other researchers have teased out gamma-ray pulsars that have no radio counterparts through millions of hours of computer calculation, a process called a blind search.
More than 15 years after its launch, Fermi remains an incredible discovery machine, and pulsars and their neutron star kin are leading the way.
Elizabeth Hays
Fermi Project Scientist
Of the 3,400 pulsars known, most of them observed via radio waves and located within our Milky Way galaxy, only about 10% also pulse in gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Visible light has energies between 2 and 3 electron volts. Fermi’s Large Area Telescope can detect gamma rays with billions of times this energy, and other facilities have observed emission thousands of times greater still from the nearby Vela pulsar, the brightest persistent source in the sky for Fermi.
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This movie shows the Vela pulsar in gamma rays detected by the Large Area Telescope aboard NASA’s Fermi observatory. A single pulsar cycle is repeated. Bluer colors indicate gamma rays with higher energies. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration The Vela pulsar and its famous sibling in the Crab Nebula are young, solitary objects, formed about 11,000 and 970 years ago, respectively. Their emissions arise as their magnetic fields spin through space, but this also gradually slows their rotation. The younger Crab pulsar spins nearly 30 times a second, while Vela clocks in about a third as fast.
The Old and the Restless
Paradoxically, though, pulsars that are thousands of times older spin much faster. One example of these so-called millisecond pulsars (MSPs) is J1824-2452A. It whirls around 328 times a second and, with an age of about 30 million years, ranks among the youngest MSPs known.
Thanks to a great combination of gamma-ray brightness and smooth spin slowdown, the MSP J1231-1411 is an ideal “timer” for use in gravitational wave searches. By monitoring a collection of stable MSPs, astronomers hope to link timing changes to passing low-frequency gravitational waves – ripples in space-time – that cannot be detected by current gravitational observatories. It was discovered in one of the first radio searches targeting Fermi gamma-ray sources not associated with any known counterpart at other wavelengths, a technique that turned out to be exceptionally successful.
“Before Fermi, we didn’t know if MSPs would be visible at high energies, but it turns out they mostly radiate in gamma rays and now make up fully half of our catalog,” said co-author Lucas Guillemot, an associate astronomer at the Laboratory of Physics and Chemistry of the Environment and Space and the University of Orleans, France.
Along Come the Spiders
The presence of MSPs in binary systems offers a clue to understanding the age-spin paradox. Left to itself, a pulsar’s emissions slow it down, and with slower spin its emissions dim. But if closely paired with a normal star, the pulsar can pull a stream of matter from its companion that, over time, can spin up the pulsar.
“Spider” systems offer a glimpse of what happens next. They’re classified as redbacks or black widows – named for spiders known for consuming their mates. Black widows have light companions (less than about 5% of the Sun’s mass), while redbacks have heavier partners. As the pulsar spins up, its emissions and particle outflows become so invigorated that – through processes still poorly understood – it heats and slowly evaporates its companion. The most energetic spiders may fully evaporate their partners, leaving only an isolated MSP behind.
J1555-2908 is a black widow with a surprise – its gravitational web may have ensnared a passing planet. An analysis of 12 years of Fermi data reveals long-term spin variations much larger than those seen in other MSPs. “We think a model incorporating the planet as a third body in a wide orbit around the pulsar and its companion describes the changes a little better than other explanations, but we need a few more years of Fermi observations to confirm it,” said co-author Colin Clark, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany.
Other curious binaries include the so-called transitional pulsars, such as J1023+0038, the first identified. An erratic stream of gas flowing from the companion to the neutron star may surge, suddenly forming a disk around the pulsar that can persist for years. The disk shines brightly in optical light, X-rays, and gamma rays, but pulses become undetectable. When the disk again vanishes, so does the high-energy light and the pulses return.
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This artist’s concept illustrates a possible model for the transitional pulsar J1023. When astronomers can detect pulses in radio (green), the pulsar’s energetic outflow holds back its companion’s gas stream. Sometimes the stream surges, creating a bright disk around the pulsar that can persist for years. The disk shines brightly in X-rays, and gas reaching the neutron star produces jets that emit gamma rays (magenta), obscuring the pulses until the disk eventually dissipates. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Some pulsars don’t require a partner to switch things up. J2021+4026, a young, isolated pulsar located about 4,900 light-years away, underwent a puzzling “mode change” in 2011, dimming its gamma rays over about a week and then, years later, slowly returning to its original brightness. Similar behavior had been seen in some radio pulsars, but this was a first in gamma rays. Astronomers suspect the event may have been triggered by crustal cracks that temporarily changed the pulsar‘s magnetic field.
Farther afield, Fermi discovered the first gamma-ray pulsar in another galaxy, the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in 2015. And in 2021, astronomers announced the discovery of a giant gamma-ray flare from a different type of neutron star (called a magnetar) located in the Sculptor galaxy, about 11.4 million light-years away.
“More than 15 years after its launch, Fermi remains an incredible discovery machine, and pulsars and their neutron star kin are leading the way,” said Elizabeth Hays, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Explore the Fermi gamma-ray pulsar catalog on WorldWide Telescope
Max Planck Institute release
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(301) 286-1940
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Last Updated Nov 28, 2023 Editor Francis Reddy Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson delivers remarks before the ribbon cutting ceremony to open NASA’s Earth Information Center, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. The Earth Information Center is new immersive experience that combines live data sets with cutting-edge data visualization and storytelling to allow visitors to see how our planet is changing. NASA/Joel Kowsky NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other agency leaders will participate in the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) beginning Thursday, Nov. 30, through Tuesday, Dec. 12, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
This global conference brings together countries committed to addressing climate change, which is a key priority for the Biden-Harris Administration and NASA. For the first time, a NASA administrator will attend, joining an expected 70,000 participants, world leaders, and representatives from nearly 200 countries.
Throughout the conference, parties will review the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and, also for the first time, provide a comprehensive assessment of progress since adopting the Paris Agreement.
In addition to Nelson, NASA participants in the conference include:
Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate advisor Susie Perez Quinn, NASA’s chief of staff Karen St. Germain, director, NASA Earth Science Division Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, program scientist, ocean physics, NASA Earth Science Division Laura Rogers, associate program manager, ecological conservation, NASA Langley Research Center Wenying Su, senior research scientist, climate science, NASA Langley Research Center Ben Hamlington, research scientist, sea level and ice, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory During the conference, Nelson will participate in the first Space Agency Leaders’ Summit, which aims to demonstrate a collective commitment toward strengthening global climate initiatives and promoting sustainable space operations.
Throughout the conference, NASA leaders also will participate in additional events and presentations at the NASA Hyperwall, a main attraction at the U.S. Center showing how the agency’s climate science and research helps model and predict ocean health, heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and droughts, among its other Earth-related research. NASA will provide a hyperwall presentation every day, some with interagency partners, between Sunday, Dec. 3, and Monday, Dec. 11.
Climate adaptation and mitigation efforts require robust climate observations and research. NASA’s unique vantage point from space provides critical information to advance understanding of our changing planet. With more than two dozen satellites and instruments in orbit, NASA’s climate data – which is openly and freely available to anyone – provides insight on how the planet is changing and measure key climate indicators, such as greenhouse gas emissions, rising sea level and clouds, and precipitation.
A full schedule of U.S. Center events at COP28 is available at:
https://www.state.gov/u-s-center-at-cop28-schedule/
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Faith McKie
Headquarters, Washington
202-262-8342
faith.d.mckie@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 27, 2023 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA to Showcase Earth Science Data at COP28
This illustration shows the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite in orbit over Earth. SWOT’s main instrument, KaRIn, helps survey the water on more than 90% of Earth’s surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. NASA/JPL-Caltech With 26 Earth-observing satellite missions, as well as instruments flying on planes and the space station, NASA has a global vantage point for studying our planet’s oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere and deciphering how changes in one drive change in others.
The agency will share that knowledge and data at the 28th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28), which brings international parties together to accelerate action toward the goals of the Paris Agreement and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP28 will be held at the Expo City in Dubai, United Arab Emirates from Thursday, Nov. 30 to Tuesday, Dec. 12.
All U.S. events at COP28 are open to the local press and will be live-streamed on the U.S. Center at COP28 website and the U.S. Center YouTube channel.
NASA takes a full-picture approach to understanding all areas of our home planet using our vast satellite fleet and the data collected from their observations. The agency’s data is open-source and available for the public and scientists to study. NASA is showcasing the data at COP28 to share the different ways it can be used globally. The agency’s complete collection of Earth data can be found here.
The scientific research and understanding developed from NASA’s Earth observations are made into predictive models. Those models can be used to develop applications and actionable science to inform individuals including civic leaders and planners, resource managers, emergency managers, and communities looking to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
These satellites and models are augmented by the observations made from the International Space Station. The inclined, low Earth orbit from the station provides variable views and lighting over more than 90 percent of the inhabited surface of the Earth, a useful complement to sensor systems on satellites in higher-altitude polar orbits.
Closer to the surface, NASA’s aviation research is focused on advancing technologies for more efficient airplane flight, including hybrid-electric propulsion, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Technological advances in these areas have the potential to reduce human impacts on climate and air quality.
Hyperwall
At the U.S. Center at COP28, in-person visitors can see the NASA Hyperwall where NASA scientists will provide live presentations showing how the agency’s work supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s agenda to encourage a governmentwide approach to climate change. During the hyperwall talks, NASA leaders, scientists and interagency partners will discuss the agency’s end-to-end research about our planet. This includes designing new instruments, satellites, and systems to collect and freely distribute the most complete and precise data possible about Earth’s land, ocean, and atmospheric system. A full schedule of NASA’s hyperwall talks is available.
Katherine Rohloff
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
katherine.a.rohloff@nasa.gov
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