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Amateur astronomers and Cassini spacecraft capture Saturn storm

April 30, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 30 (ANI): For the first time, amateur astronomers used the composite infrared spectrometer instrument aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to look at a massive blizzard in Saturn’s atmosphere.

The instrument collected the most detailed data to date of temperatures and gas distribution in that planet’s storms.

The data showed a large, turbulent storm, dredging up loads of material from the deep atmosphere and covering an area at least five times larger than the biggest blizzard in this year’s Washington, D.C.-area storm front nicknamed “Snowmageddon.”

“We were so excited to get a heads-up from the amateurs. Data from the storm cell would have been averaged out,” said Gordon Bjoraker, a composite infrared spectrometer team member based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Normally.

Cassini’s radio and plasma wave instrument and imaging cameras have been tracking thunder and lightning storms on Saturn for years in a band around Saturn’s mid-latitudes nicknamed “storm alley.”

But storms can come and go on a time scale of weeks, while Cassini’s imaging and spectrometer observations have to be locked in place months in advance.

The radio and plasma wave instrument regularly picks up electrostatic discharges associated with the storms, so team members have been sending periodic tips to amateur astronomers, who can quickly go to their backyard telescopes and try to see the bright convective storm clouds.

Amateur astronomers including Anthony Wesley, Trevor Barry and Christopher Go got one of those notices in February and were able to take dozens of pictures over the next several weeks.

In late March, Wesley sent Cassini scientists an e-mail with a picture of the storm.

“I wanted to be sure that images like these were being seen by the Cassini team just in case this was something of interest to be imaged directly by Cassini or the Hubble Space Telescope,” wrote Wesley.

Cassini scientists eagerly pored through the images, including a picture of the storm at its peak on March 13 by Go, who lives in the Philippines.

And luckily, the composite infrared spectrometer happened to be targeting the latitude of the storms.

The instrument’s scientists knew there could be storms there, but didn’t know when they might be active.

Data obtained by the spectrometer on March 25 and 26 showed larger than expected amounts of phosphine, a gas typically found in Saturn’s deep atmosphere and an indicator that powerful currents were dredging material upward into the upper troposphere.

The spectrometer data also showed another signature of the storm: the tropopause, the dividing line between the serene stratosphere and the lower, churning troposphere, was about 0.5 Kelvin (1 degree Fahrenheit) colder in the storm cell than in neighboring areas.

“A balloonist floating about 100 kilometers down from the bottom of
Saturn’s calm stratosphere would experience an ammonia-ice blizzard with the intensity of Snowmageddon. These blizzards appear to be powered by violent storms deeper down — perhaps another 100 to 200 kilometers down — where lightning has been observed and the clouds are made of water and ammonia,” said Brigette Hesman, a composite infrared spectrometer team member who is an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: amateur astronomers, cassini scientists, cassini spacecraft, Composite Infrared Spectrometer, Convective Storm, e-mail, Electrostatic Discharges, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, Greenbelt Md, Hubble Space Telescope, Infrared Spectrometer Instrument, Mid Latitudes, Plasma Wave, Saturn Storm, space flight center, Storm Cell, Storm Clouds, Thunder And Lightning, Thunder And Lightning Storms

Mysterious ‘dark flow’ might be tug of another Universe

March 19, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 19 (ANI): Scientists say that a mysterious dark cosmic flow, which is carrying along many galaxy clusters in the universe, might be the tug of another universe.

Recent research has found that the universe is not only expanding, it’s being swept along in the direction of constellations Centaurus and Hydra at a steady clip of one million miles per hour, pulled, perhaps, by the gravity of another universe.

Scientists have no idea what’s tugging at the known world, except to say that whatever it is likely dates back to the fraction of the second between the universe’s explosive birth 13.7 billion years ago and its inflation a split second later.

“At this point, we don’t have enough information to see what it is, or to constrain it. We can only say with certainty that somewhere very far away the world is very different than what we see locally. Whether it”s ‘another universe’ or a different fabric of space-time we don’t know,” Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told Discovery News.

Kashlinsky and colleagues have spent years building up evidence for what they call “the dark flow.”

They look at how the relic radiation from the Big Bang explosion scatters as it passes through gases in galaxy clusters, a process that is something akin to looking at stars through the bubble of Earth’s atmosphere.

With data on more than 1,000 galaxy clusters, including some as distant as 3 billion light-years from Earth, the measurements show the universe’s steady flow is clearly not a statistical fluke, according to Kashlinsky.

The force and direction of the flow holds steady across space and through time.

“It’s the same flow at a distance of a hundred million light-years as it is at 2.5 billion light-years and it points in the same direction and the same amplitude. It looks like the entire matter of the universe is moving from one direction to the next,” Kashlinsky said.

The observation fits theoretical models of how our universe might be impacted by sibling universes, predicted by string theory that we cannot directly detect.

It’s like our universe is a box and everything that it contains is inside it like milk in a carton, physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Discovery News.

“If our universe is all that’s there, then the liquid in the box shouldn’t be sliding. Whatever is pulling it has to be bigger than the size of the box,” she said.

“There is a structure beyond the horizon of our universe and that structure is exerting a force on our universe and creating this flow,” she added. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Alexander Kashlinsky, Centaurus, constellations, Cosmic Flow, discovery news, galaxy clusters, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, greenbelt maryland, hundred million, Hydra, Looking At Stars, miles per hour, million light years, NASA, One Million Miles, Relic Radiation, space flight center, Statistical Fluke, steady flow

Lava carved ancient Martian riverbed

March 11, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 10 (ANI): A new American research has revealed that an ancient “riverbed” in Mars was not made by the flow of water but was carved by molten lava.

The 270-km long Martian channel near the Ascraeus Mons volcano does not seem to have been made by water.

“We started seeing that, instead of this [liquid] cutting into an existing surface, it was building a surface—it built a ridge up to 40 meters [130 feet] high” millions of years ago, explained study co-author Jacob Bleacher of NASA”s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The channel is also roofed over in some areas and lined with vents, characterises usually linked to lava tubes.

Bleacher said: “You don”t see this on Earth in [river] settings.

“But you see it all the time in volcanic settings. So that”s kind of our smoking gun.”

However, Bleacher, who presented his work last week at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, said this does not mean water never existed on the red planet.

But it does mean scientists may have to reconsider when and where they believe water might have existed on Mars.

According to Laszlo Kestay, a planetary geologist on the NASA team that produced the new images of the channel, the findings are also exciting because they shed new light on Mars” volcanic history.

“I think there are some very clearly water-formed features on Mars, but there are other things that are more puzzling. Jake and colleagues make a very compelling case that at least this one is volcanic,” National Geographic News quoted Kestay, as saying.

And chances are bright that other channels in the Ascraeus Mons area will turn out to be lava-made as well, said Kestay, who works with the U.S. Geological Survey”s Astrogeology Science Center.

According to him, the new image data are “revealing not just these channels but a whole suite of smaller volcanic features and showing that volcanism is more widespread spatially than people thought.” (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Ancient Riverbed, Ascraeus Mons, Astrogeology, Bleacher, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, greenbelt maryland, Lava Tubes, lunar and planetary science conference, Molten Lava, Nasa Team, National Geographic News, planetary geologist, planetary science conference, smoking gun, space flight center, u s geological survey, Volcanic Features, Volcanic History, volcanism

Lava likely made river-like meandering channel on Mars

March 5, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 5 (ANI): New research indicates that flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, which probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars.

Whether channels on Mars were formed by water or by lava has been debated for years, and the outcome is thought to influence the likelihood of finding life there.

“To understand if life, as we know it, ever existed on Mars, we need to understand where water is or was,” said Jacob Bleacher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

Geologists think that the water currently on the surface of Mars is either held in the soil or takes the form of ice at the planet”s north and south poles.

But, some researchers contend that water flowed or pooled on the surface sometime in the past.

Water in this form is thought to increase the chance of some form of past or present life.

Bleacher and his colleagues carried out a careful study of a single channel on the southwest flank of Mars’ Ascraeus Mons volcano, one of the three clustered volcanoes collectively called the Tharsis Montes.

To piece together images covering more than 270 kilometers of this channel, the team relied on high-resolution pictures from three cameras—the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), the Context Imager (CTX) and the High/Super Resolution Stereo Color (HRSC) imager—as well as earlier data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA).

Because the fluid that formed this and other Ascraeus Mons channels is long-gone, its identity has been hard to deduce, but the visual clues at the source of the channel seem to point to water.

These clues include small islands, secondary channels that branch off and rejoin the main one and eroded bars on the insides of the curves of the channels.

But at the channel’s other end, an area not clearly seen before, Bleacher and colleagues found a ridge that appears to have lava flows coming out of it.

In some areas, “the channel is actually roofed over, as if it were a lava tube, and lined up along this, we see several rootless vents,” or openings where lava is forced out of the tube and creates small structures, explained Bleacher.

These types of features don’t form in water-carved channels, he noted.

Bleacher said that having one end of the channel formed by water and the other end by lava is an “exotic” combination.

According to him, more likely, the entire channel was formed by lava. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Ascraeus Mons, Bleacher, canyons, careful study, Ctx, curves, geologists, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, laser altimeter, lava, Mars Orbiter, Mola, NASA, Single Channel, south poles, Southwest Flank, space flight center, Tharsis Montes, thermal emission imaging system

Moon”s biggest crater exposes its hidden lower crust

March 5, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 5 (ANI): Reports indicate that the biggest and deepest crater on the Moon can provide glimpses of the hidden lower crust of Earth”s natural satellite.

Shortly after the Moon formed, an asteroid smacked into its southern hemisphere and gouged out a truly enormous crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, almost 1,500 miles across and more than five miles deep.

Asteroid bombardment over billions of years has left the lunar surface pockmarked with craters of all sizes, and covered with solidified lava, rubble, and dust.

Glimpses of the original surface, or crust, are rare, and views into the deep crust are rarer still.

Fortunately, a crater on the edge of the South Pole-Aitken basin may provide just such a view.

According to Noah Petro of NASA”s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, “We believe the central part of the Apollo Basin may expose a portion of the Moon”s lower crust. If correct, this may be one of just a few places on the Moon where we have a view into the deep lunar crust, because it”s not covered by volcanic material as many other such deep areas are.”

“Just as geologists can reconstruct Earth”s history by analyzing a cross-section of rock layers exposed by a canyon or a road cut, we can begin to understand the early lunar history by studying what”s being revealed in Apollo,” he said.

Petro and his team made the discovery with the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), a NASA instrument on board India”s Chandrayaan-1 lunar-orbiting spacecraft.

Analysis of the light (spectra) in images from this instrument revealed that portions of the interior of Apollo have a similar composition to the impact melt in the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin.

As you go deeper into the Moon, the crust contains minerals have greater amounts of iron. When the Moon first formed, it was largely molten.

Minerals containing heavier elements, like iron, sank down toward the core, and minerals with lighter elements, like silicon, potassium, and sodium, floated to the top, forming the original lunar crust.

“The asteroid that created the SPA basin probably carved through the crust and perhaps into the upper mantle. The impact melt that solidified to form the central floor of SPA would have been a mixture of all those layers,” said Petro.

“We expect to see that it has slightly more iron than the bottom of Apollo, since it went deeper into the crust. This is what we found with M3,” he said.

“However, we also see that this area in Apollo has more iron than the surrounding lunar highlands, indicating Apollo has uncovered a layer of the lunar crust between what is typically seen on the surface and that in the deepest craters like SPA,” he added. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Aitken, asteroid bombardment, Chandrayaan, craters, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, greenbelt maryland, light spectra, Lunar Crust, Lunar History, lunar surface, nasa goddard, nasa instrument, natural satellite, Potas, rock layers, south pole, southern hemisphere, space flight center, volcanic material

NASA’s lunar reconnaissance orbiter begins detailed mapping of moon’s south pole

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 18 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has successfully completed its testing and calibration phase and entered its mapping orbit of the moon’s south pole.

The spacecraft already has made significant progress toward creating the most detailed atlas of the moon’s south pole to date.

“The LRO mission already has begun to give us new data that will lead to a vastly improved atlas of the lunar south pole and advance our capability for human exploration and scientific benefit,” said Richard Vondrak, LRO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

LRO is scheduled for a one-year exploration mission in a polar orbit of about 31 miles above the lunar surface, the closest any spacecraft has orbited the moon.

During the next year, LRO will produce a complete map of the lunar surface in unprecedented detail, search for resources and safe landing sites for human explorers, and measure lunar temperatures and radiation levels.

“The LRO instruments, spacecraft, and ground systems continue to operate essentially flawlessly,” said Craig Tooley, LRO project manager at Goddard

“The team completed the planned commissioning and calibration activities on time and also got a significant head start collecting data even before we moved to the mission’s mapping orbit,” he added.

The south pole of the moon is of great interest to explorers because potential resources such as water ice or hydrogen may exist there.

Permanently shadowed polar craters that are bitterly cold at their bottoms may hold deposits of water ice or hydrogen from comet impacts or the solar wind.

The deposits may have accumulated in these “cold-trap” regions over billions of years.

If enough of these resources exist to make mining practical, future long-term human missions to the moon potentially could save the considerable expense of hauling water from Earth.

First results from LRO’s Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector, or LEND, indicate that permanently shadowed and nearby regions may harbor water and hydrogen.

According to the first measurements from the Diviner instrument, large areas in the permanently shadowed craters are about minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit (33 Kelvin), more than cold enough to store water ice or hydrogen for billions of years.

Additional observations will be needed to confirm this.

LEND relies on a decrease in neutron radiation from the lunar surface to indicate the presence of water or hydrogen.

“If these deposits are present, an analysis of them will help us understand the interaction of the moon with the rest of the solar system,” Vondrak said. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: Atlas Of The Moon, Calibration Activities, Calibration Phase, Cold Trap, Comet Impacts, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, greenbelt maryland, Human Explorers, human missions, LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, lunar south pole, Mapping Orbit, missions to the moon, nasa goddard, Polar Orbit, project scientist, radiation levels, space flight center

NASA’s Swift satellite makes best-ever ultraviolet portrait of Andromeda galaxy

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, September 17 (ANI): NASA’s Swift satellite has acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet.

The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own.

“Swift reveals about 20,000 ultraviolet sources in M31, especially hot, young stars and dense star clusters,” said Stefan Immler, a research scientist on the Swift team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Of particular importance is that we have covered the galaxy in three ultraviolet filters. That will let us study M31′s star-formation processes in much greater detail than previously possible,” he added.

M31, also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is more than 220,000 light-years across and lies 2.5 million light-years away.

On a clear, dark night, the galaxy is faintly visible as a misty patch to the naked eye.

Between May 25 and July 26, 2008, Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) acquired 330 images of M31 at wavelengths of 192.8, 224.6, and 260 nanometers.

The images represent a total exposure time of 24 hours.

The task of assembling the resulting 85 gigabytes of images fell to Erin Grand, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland at College Park who worked with Immler as an intern this summer.

“After ten weeks of processing that immense amount of data, I’m extremely proud of this new view of M31,” she said.

Several features are immediately apparent in the new mosaic.

The first is the striking difference between the galaxy’s central bulge and its spiral arms.

“The bulge is smoother and redder because it’s full of older and cooler stars,” Immler explained. “Very few new stars form here because most of the materials needed to make them have been depleted,” he added.

Dense clusters of hot, young, blue stars sparkle beyond the central bulge.

M31′s disk and spiral arms contain most of the gas and dust needed to produce new generations of stars.

Star clusters are especially plentiful in an enormous ring about 150,000 light-years across.

“Swift is surveying nearby galaxies like M31 so astronomers can better understand star- formation conditions and relate them to conditions in the distant galaxies where we see gamma-ray bursts occurring,” said Neil Gehrels, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard. (ANI)

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Beefed-up diets of Asia’s middle class may lead to chronic food shortages

August 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 30 (ANI): Scientists have said that the beefed-up diets of Asia’s expanding middle class could lead to chronic food shortages for the water-stressed region.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the threat was highlighted in a study by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which estimate that Asian demand for food and livestock fodder will double in 40 years.
Asia’s growing economy and appetite for meat will require a radical overhaul of farmland irrigation to feed a population expected to swell to 1.4 billion by 2050, scientists warned at Stockholm’s World Water Week recently.
At current crop yields, East Asia would need 47 percent more irrigated farmland and to find 70 percent more water, the study found.
South Asia would have to expand its irrigated crop areas by 30 percent and increase water use by 57 percent.
Given existing agriculture pressure on water resources and territory, that’s an impossible scenario, according to the study authors.

Scientists urge modernization of existing large-scale irrigation systems, most of which were installed in the 1970s and 1980s.
It’s estimated that India, the world’s largest consumer of underground water, has 19 million unregulated groundwater pumps.
Groundwater in northern India is receding by as much as a foot (0.3 meter) a year due to rampant water extraction, most of it for crop irrigation, according to a study.
More than 109 cubic kilometres of groundwater were drained from the region between 2002 and 2008, according to the satellite image-based study led by scientists with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“Governments’ inability to regulate this practice is giving rise to scary scenarios of groundwater over-exploitation, which could lead to regional food crises and widespread social unrest,” said Tushaar Shah of IWMI.

As for China, the country’s per capita “water footprint” for food production has almost doubled since 1985, according to Junguo Liu of the Beijing Forestry University.
“A switch from traditional rice and noodles to a meatier diet is behind the change,” Liu said. “Changes in food consumption are the major cause of worsening water scarcity in China,” he added.
Total water requirements for food production in China are predicted to rise by 40 to 50 percent in the next 30 years, he further added.
“Where do you get such a big amount of water? It is a really big question and a big challenge,” he said.
“If other developing countries follow China toward a Western diet, the global water shortage becomes even more serious,” he added. (ANI)

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Warped debris disks around stars a result of interstellar wind

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 29 (ANI): In a new research, a team of scientists has determined that the warped shapes of the dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars, may be due to interstellar wind.

The dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars occasionally take on some difficult-to-understand shapes.

Now, a team led by John Debes at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has found that a star’s motion through interstellar gas can account for many of them.

“The disks contain small comet- or asteroid-like bodies that may grow to form planets,” Debes said. “These small bodies often collide, which produces a lot of fine dust,” he added.

As the star moves through the galaxy, it encounters thin gas clouds that create a kind of interstellar wind.

“The small particles slam into the flow, slow down, and gradually bend from their original trajectories to follow it,” said Debes.

Far from being empty, the space between stars is filled with patchy clouds of low-density gas.

When a star encounters a relatively dense clump of this gas, the resulting flow produces a drag force on any orbiting dust particles.

The force only affects the smallest particles – those about one micrometer across, or about the size of particles in smoke.

“This fine dust is usually removed through collisions among the particles, radiation pressure from the star’s light and other forces,” explained Debes. “The drag from interstellar gas just takes them on a different journey than they otherwise would have had,” he said.

Working with Alycia Weinberger at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Goddard astrophysicist Marc Kuchner, Debes was using the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate the composition of dust around the star HD 32297, which lies 340 light-years away in the constellation Orion.

He noticed that the interior of the dusty disk – a region comparable in size to our own solar system – was warped in a way that matched a previously known warp at larger distances.

“Other research indicated there were interstellar gas clouds in the vicinity. The pieces came together to make me think that gas drag was a good explanation for what was going on,” Debes said.

“It looks like interstellar gas helps young planetary systems shed dust much as a summer breeze helps dandelions scatter seeds,” Kuchner said.

As dust particles respond to the interstellar wind, a debris disk can morph into peculiar shapes determined by the details of its collision with the gas cloud. (ANI)

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Beefed-up diets of Asia’s middle class may lead to chronic food shortages

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 30 (ANI): Scientists have said that the beefed-up diets of Asia’s expanding middle class could lead to chronic food shortages for the water-stressed region.

Asia’s growing economy and appetite for meat will require a radical overhaul of farmland irrigation to feed a population expected to swell to 1.4 billion by 2050, scientists warned at Stockholm’s World Water Week recently.

At current crop yields, East Asia would need 47 percent more irrigated farmland and to find 70 percent more water, the study found.

South Asia would have to expand its irrigated crop areas by 30 percent and increase water use by 57 percent.

Given existing agriculture pressure on water resources and territory, that’s an impossible scenario, according to the study authors.

Scientists urge modernization of existing large-scale irrigation systems, most of which were installed in the 1970s and 1980s.

It’s estimated that India, the world’s largest consumer of underground water, has 19 million unregulated groundwater pumps.

Groundwater in northern India is receding by as much as a foot (0.3 meter) a year due to rampant water extraction, most of it for crop irrigation, according to a study.

More than 109 cubic kilometres of groundwater were drained from the region between 2002 and 2008, according to the satellite image-based study led by scientists with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Governments’ inability to regulate this practice is giving rise to scary scenarios of groundwater over-exploitation, which could lead to regional food crises and widespread social unrest,” said Tushaar Shah of IWMI.

As for China, the country’s per capita “water footprint” for food production has almost doubled since 1985, according to Junguo Liu of the Beijing Forestry University.

“A switch from traditional rice and noodles to a meatier diet is behind the change,” Liu said. “Changes in food consumption are the major cause of worsening water scarcity in China,” he added.

Total water requirements for food production in China are predicted to rise by 40 to 50 percent in the next 30 years, he further added.

“Where do you get such a big amount of water? It is a really big question and a big challenge,” he said.

“If other developing countries follow China toward a Western diet, the global water shortage becomes even more serious,” he added. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: chronic food shortages, crop areas, crop irrigation, cubic kilometres, Food And Agriculture Organization, food crises, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, groundwater pumps, irrigated crop, irrigation systems, iwmi, nasa goddard, National Geographic News, northern india, radical overhaul, satellite image, scary scenarios, Social Unrest, space flight center, water management institute

NASA scientist makes first full assessment of Africa’s mangrove forests

August 21, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 21 (ANI): A NASA scientist has made what is believed to be the first full assessment of the African continent’s mangrove forests.

Environmental scientist Lola Fatoyinbo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) developed and employed a method that can be used across the continent, overcoming expensive, ad hoc, and inconsistent modes of ground-based measurement.

“We’ve lost more than 50 percent of the world’s mangrove forests in a little over half a century; a third of them have disappeared in the last 20 years alone,” said Fatoyinbo, whose earlier study of Mozambique’s coastal forests laid the groundwork for the continent-wide study.

“Hopefully, this technique will offer scientists and officials a method of estimating change in this special type of forest,” she added.

Mangroves are the most common ecosystem in coastal areas of the tropics and sub-tropics.

The swampy forests are essential, especially in densely-populated developing countries, for rice farming, fishing and aquaculture (freshwater and saltwater farming), timber, and firewood.

Some governments also increasingly depend on them for eco-tourism.

The large, dense root systems are a natural obstacle that helps protect shorelines against debris and erosion.

Mangroves are often the first line of defense against severe storms, tempering the impact of strong winds and floods.

These coastal woodlands also have a direct link to climate, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere at a rate of about 100 pounds per acre per day, which is comparable to the per acre intake by tropical rainforests (though rainforests cover more of Earth’s surface).

“To my knowledge, this study is the first complete mapping of Africa’s mangroves, a comprehensive, historic baseline enabling us to truly begin monitoring the welfare of these forests,” said Assaf Anyamba, a University of Maryland-Baltimore County expert on vegetation mapping, based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Fatoyinbo’s research combines multiple satellite observations of tree height and land cover, mathematical formulas, and “ground-truthing” data from the field to measure the full expanse and makeup of the coastal forests.

Her measurements yielded three new kinds of maps of mangroves: continental maps of how much land the mangroves cover; a three-dimensional map of the height of forest canopies across the continent; and biomass maps that allow researchers to assess how much carbon the forests store.

“Beyond density or geographical size of the forests, the measurements get to the heart of the structure, or type, of mangroves,” explained Fatoyinbo. (ANI)

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NASA scientists make first discovery of life’s building block in comet

August 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 18 (ANI): NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft.

“Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet,” said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Our discovery supports the theory that some of life’s ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts,” he added.

“The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare,” said Dr. Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which co-funded the research.

Stardust passed through dense gas and dust surrounding the icy nucleus of Wild 2 on January 2, 2004.

As the spacecraft flew through this material, a special collection grid filled with aerogel – a novel sponge-like material that’s more than 99 percent empty space – gently captured samples of the comet’s gas and dust.

The grid was stowed in a capsule, which detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth on January 15, 2006.

Since then, scientists around the world have been busy analyzing the samples to learn the secrets of comet formation and our solar system’s history.

“We actually analyzed aluminum foil from the sides of tiny chambers that hold the aerogel in the collection grid,” said Elsila.

“As gas molecules passed through the aerogel, some stuck to the foil. We spent two years testing and developing our equipment to make it accurate and sensitive enough to analyze such incredibly tiny samples,” he added.

Earlier, preliminary analysis in the Goddard labs detected glycine in both the foil and a sample of the aerogel.

However, since glycine is used by terrestrial life, at first the team was unable to rule out contamination from sources on Earth.

The new research used isotopic analysis of the foil to rule out that possibility.

“We discovered that the Stardust-returned glycine has an extraterrestrial carbon isotope signature, indicating that it originated on the comet,” said Elsila.

According to Dr. Daniel Glavin of NASA Goddard, “Based on the foil and aerogel results it is highly probable that the entire comet-exposed side of the Stardust sample collection grid is coated with glycine that formed in space.” (ANI)

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Earth may become ‘Waterworld’ if rise in sea level continues

July 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 2 (ANI): If the alarming rise in sea level is anything to go by, the fictional world depicted in the Hollywood movie ‘Waterworld’ may soon be a reality.

According to a report in the Telegraph, this grim picture of planet Earth has been painted by climate scientists, who say that sea-level rise is now inevitable and will happen much quicker than most of us thought – and will last for centuries.

Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, the oceans will continue to swell as they warm and as glaciers or ice sheets slide into the sea.

Scientists say that the “official” estimate of sea level rise by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – 20cm to 60cm by 2100 – is misleading.

It could well be in the region of one to two metres, with a small risk of an even greater rise.

“When we talk of sea level rising by one or two metres by 2100 remember that it is still going to be rising after 2100,” said climate expert Dr Eric Rignot, of California University.

According to Dr Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, “”There is a very close and statistically highly significant correlation between the rate of sea level rise and the temperature increase above the pre-industrial background level.”

His calculations suggest sea level will rise between 0.5 and 1.4 metres – and the higher estimate is more likely because emissions have been rising faster than the IPCC’s worst case scenario.

“I sense than now a majority of sea level experts would agree with me that the IPCC projections are much too low,” he said.Most of my community is comfortable expecting at least a metre by the end of this century,” said Dr Robert Bindschadler, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland.

For many islands and low lying regions including much of the Netherlands, Florida and Bangladesh even small rises will spell catastrophe.

Large parts of London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo could be among cities submerged beneath the waves unless a massive engineering effort can protect them against the waves. (ANI)

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Hand-held devices that can detect presence of aerosols in air above oceans

June 30, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 30 (ANI): A team of scientists is developing hand-held devices that can detect the presence of aerosols in air above oceans by measuring how light scatters as it strikes the particles.

The portable photometers have been developed by Alexander Smirnov, an AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and his team.

Aerosols, the tiny atmospheric particles that can have an outsized impact on the climate, are just as likely to be found in the air above the oceans as they are over land.

Yet, aerosols are scarcely measured over the oceans.

Now, Smirnov, who is leading a new effort called the Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN), will send researchers with portable photometers on oceanographic research cruises.

The hand-held devices can detect the presence of aerosols in air by measuring how light scatters as it strikes the particles.

Taking the measurements is relatively easy.

Several times a day, a researcher stands on a ship’s deck when the sun is fully visible, points the instrument at the sun, and pushes a button. The photometer performs a series of scans within a few seconds.

Smirnov has arranged to have the have handheld photometers carried aboard more than 50 vessels, both commercial and research, from 12 countries since November 2006.

Initial results show that data from the portable photometers correspond well with permanent AERONET stations on select islands.

The initial efforts have produced a tantalizing observation.

“Aerosol concentrations over the oceans at the high latitudes are not as high as satellite measurements suggest they should be,” said Smirnov. “We need to figure out why we’re seeing this difference,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA and NOAA’S GOES-O satellite launched successfully

June 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 28 (ANI): The latest Geo-stationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O, soared into space Saturday after a successful launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The GOES-O spacecraft lifted off at 6:51 p.m. EDT on a Delta IV rocket.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-O satellite will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events around the world.

The satellite is the second to be launched in the GOES N series of geo-stationary environmental weather satellites.

“All indications are that GOES-O is in a normal orbit, with all spacecraft systems functioning properly,” stated Andre Dress, GOES deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“We are proud of our support teams and pleased with the performance of the Delta IV launch vehicle,” he added.

Approximately four hours and twenty-one minutes after the launch, the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle.

The Universal Space Network Western Australia tracking site in Dongara monitored the spacecraft separation.

On July 7, GOES-O will be placed in its final orbit and renamed GOES-14.

Approximately 24 days after launch, Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems will turn engineering control over to NASA.

About five months later, NASA will transfer operational control of GOES-14 to NOAA. The satellite will be checked out, stored in orbit and available for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust its fuel.

NASA contracted with Boeing to build and launch the GOES-O spacecraft.

NASA’s Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida supported the launch in an advisory role.

The NOAA manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States.

Goddard procures and manages the design, development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost-reimbursable basis. (ANI)

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Mars may have a water table hidden underground

June 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, June 27 (ANI): A new hypothesis has suggested that Mars may have a water table hidden underground, despite satellite data suggesting otherwise.

Today the small amount of water detected on the planet is locked in the polar ice caps, but recently discovered geological features suggest liquid water once flowed on its surface.

This could now be hiding beneath the rocky crust.

According to a report in New Scientist, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite has used ground-penetrating radar in some areas to look for a water table but found no evidence for one, despite research that concluded any water would be found within 9 kilometres of the surface, which is well within the reach of the probe’s instruments.

Planetary scientist Bill Farrell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues say that scientists should not give up the search for the Martian water table just yet.

The satellite’s radar signal should bounce back from shiny surfaces like water.

But, the team calculates that if the layer of rock and icy soil above the water table is particularly conductive, it could be absorbing enough energy from the radar to obscure a telltale signal.

According to Farrell, the work will be useful for missions to other icy bodies too.

“We don’t want future geologists to look at their radar data and say no reflectance means no aquifer,” he said. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: bill farrell, european space agency, geological features, goddard space flight, goddard space flight center, greenbelt maryland, ground penetrating radar, liquid water, mars express, martian water, New Scientist, planetary scientist, polar ice caps, radar data, radar signal, Rocky Crust, scientist bill, shiny surfaces, space flight center, Underground London, water table

NASA’s lunar mission successfully enters Moon orbit

June 23, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 23 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has successfully entered orbit around the moon after a four and a half day journey from the Earth.

Engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, confirmed the spacecraft’s lunar orbit insertion at 6:27 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.

During transit to the moon, engineers performed a mid-course correction to get the spacecraft in the proper position to reach its lunar destination.

Since the moon is always moving, the spacecraft shot for a target point ahead of the moon.

When close to the moon, LRO used its rocket motor to slow down until the gravity of the moon caught the spacecraft in lunar orbit.

“Lunar orbit insertion is a crucial milestone for the mission,” said Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at Goddard.

“The LRO mission cannot begin until the moon captures us. Once we enter the moon’s orbit, we can begin to buildup the dataset needed to understand in greater detail the lunar topography, features and resources. We are so proud to be a part of this exciting mission and NASA’s planned return to the moon,” she added.

A series of four engine burns over the next four days will put the satellite into its commissioning phase orbit.

During the commissioning phase, each of its seven instruments is checked out and brought online.

The commissioning phase will end approximately 60 days after launch, when LRO will use its engines to transition to its primary mission orbit.

For its primary mission, LRO will orbit above the moon at about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, for one year.

The spacecraft’s instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it at many spectral wavelengths.

The satellite will explore the moon’s deepest craters, examining permanently sunlit and shadowed regions, and provide understanding of the effects of lunar radiation on humans.

It is speculated that LRO will return more data about the moon than any previous mission. (ANI)

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NASA spacecraft detects ultra fast hydrogen coming from Moon

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 19 (ANI): NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the Moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence.

During spacecraft commissioning, the IBEX team turned on the IBEX-Hi instrument, built primarily by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which measures atoms with speeds from about half a million to 2.5 million miles per hour.

Its companion sensor, IBEX-Lo, built by Lockheed Martin, the University of New Hampshire, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the University of Bern in Switzerland, measures atoms with speeds from about one hundred thousand to 1.5 million mph.

“Just after we got IBEX-Hi turned on, the Moon happened to pass right through its field of view, and there they were,” said Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

“The instrument lit up with a clear signal of the neutral atoms being detected as they backscattered from the Moon,” he added.

From its vantage point in space, IBEX sees about half of the Moon – one quarter of it is dark and faces the nightside (away from the Sun), while the other quarter faces the dayside (toward the Sun).

Solar wind particles impact only the dayside, where most of them are embedded in the lunar surface, while some scatter off in different directions.

The scattered ones mostly become neutral atoms in this reflection process by picking up electrons from the lunar surface.

The IBEX team estimates that only about 10 percent of the solar wind ions reflect off the sunward side of the Moon as neutral atoms, while the remaining 90 percent are embedded in the lunar surface.

Characteristics of the lunar surface, such as dust, craters and rocks, play a role in determining the percentage of particles that become embedded and the percentage of neutral particles, as well as their direction of travel, that scatter.

According to McComas, the results also shed light on the “recycling” process undertaken by particles throughout the solar system and beyond.

The solar wind and other charged particles impact dust and larger objects as they travel through space, where they backscatter and are reprocessed as neutral atoms.

These atoms can travel long distances before they are stripped of their electrons and become ions and the complicated process begins again.

The combined scattering and neutralization processes now observed at the Moon have implications for interactions with objects across the solar system, such as asteroids, Kuiper Belt objects and other Moons. (ANI)

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NASA’s new lunar mission to hunt for water on Moon

June 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 19 (ANI): NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will hunt for water on the Moon, launched aboard an Atlas V rocket on June 18.

The satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon.

The spacecraft will be placed in low polar orbit about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, above the moon for a one-year primary mission.

High-resolution imagery from LRO’s camera will help identify landing sites for future explorers and characterize the moon’s topography and composition.

The hydrogen concentrations at the moon’s poles will be mapped in detail, pinpointing the locations of possible water ice.

A miniaturized radar system will image the poles and test communication capabilities.

“During the 60 day commissioning period, we will turn on spacecraft components and science instruments,” explained Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at Goddard.

“All instruments will be turned on within two weeks of launch, and we should start seeing the moon in new and greater detail within the next month,” she added.

“We learned much about the moon from the Apollo program, but now it is time to return to the moon for intensive study, and we will do just that with LRO,” said Richard Vondrak, LRO project scientist at Goddard.

LRO’s instruments will help scientists compile high-resolution three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it at many spectral wavelengths.

The satellite will explore the moon’s deepest craters, exploring permanently sunlit and shadowed regions, and provide understanding of the effects of lunar radiation on humans.

“Our job is to perform reconnaissance of the moon’s surface using a suite of seven powerful instruments,” said Craig Tooley, LRO project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“NASA will use the data LRO collects to design the vehicles and systems for returning humans to the moon and selecting the landing sites that will be their destinations,” he added.

“This is a very important day for NASA,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington, which designed and developed both the LRO and LCROSS missions.

“We look forward to an extraordinary period of discovery at the moon and the information LRO will give us for future exploration missions,” he added.

All LRO initial data sets will be deposited in the Planetary Data System, a publicly accessible repository of planetary science information, within six months of launch. (ANI)

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NASA’s new lunar mission to hunt for water on Moon

June 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 19 : NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will hunt for water on the Moon, launched aboard an Atlas V rocket on June 18.