Tag Archives: NASA

Dead Forests Release Less Carbon Into Atmosphere Than Expected

By Guest PostMarch 25, 2013Environmentalaska, atmosphere, boulder, carbon, carbon dioxide, climate, climate change, CO2, david moore, dead forests release, dendroctonus ponderosae, double whammy, earth, greenhouse gas, Mexico, mountain pine beetles, NASA, nicole trahan, niwot ridge, North America, organic compounds, outbreaks, photosynthesis, pine beetle outbreaks, russell monson, soil microbes, surface, university of arizona, university of colorado, warmer conditions

Billions of trees killed in the wake of mountain pine beetle infestations, ranging from Mexico to Alaska, have not resulted in a large spike in carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, contrary to predictions, a UA-led study has found.

Massive tree die-offs release less carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, new research led by the University of Arizona suggests.

Across the world, trees are dying in increasing numbers, most likely in the wake of a climate changing toward drier and warmer conditions, scientists suspect. In western North America, outbreaks of mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have killed billions of trees from Mexico to Alaska over the last decade. (more…)

Lunar impacts created seas of molten rock

By Guest PostMarch 25, 2013Scienceanalysis of data, apollo moon rocks, apollo program, brown university, crust, differentiation, differentiation processes, fluid rock, geological sciences, james w head, laser altimeter, liquid rock, lola, luna missions, lunar crust, lunar magma ocean, lunar orbiter, magma ocean paradigm, mantle, maunder crater, melt sea, model, molten rock, moon, NASA, orientale basin, orientale melt, planetary geologist, pristine rocks, remote sensing data, rock forming processes, rock layers, russia, william vaughan

A new analysis of data from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) shows that molten rock may have been present on the Moon more recently and for longer periods than previously thought. Differentiation — a settling out of rock layers as liquid rock cools — would require thousands of years and a fluid rock sea at least six miles deep.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Early in the Moon’s history an ocean of molten rock covered its entire surface. As that lunar magma ocean cooled over millions of years, it differentiated to form the Moon’s crust and mantle. But according to a new analysis by planetary scientists from Brown University, this wasn’t the last time the Moon’s surface was melted on a massive scale. (more…)

Curiosity Mars Rover Sees Trend in Water Presence

By Guest PostMarch 20, 2013Sciencealuminum, apxs, arizona state university, basalt like proportions, calibration target, curiosity mars rover, dan, drilled rock, evidence, hydrated minerals, iron, iron bearing rocks, jim bell, knorr rock, magnesium, mars, mast camera, mastcam, maxim litvak, melissa rice, mudstone rock, NASA, silicon, trend, veins, water bearing minerals, water presence, yellowknife bay

THE WOODLANDS, Texas – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.

Last week, the rover’s science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favorable for microbial life. Additional findings presented on March 18 at a news briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling. (more…)

Panorama from NASA Mars Rover Shows Mount Sharp

By Guest PostMarch 17, 2013Scienceenvironmental history, evidence, gale crater, mars, mars rover curiosity, martian day, mast camera, mastcam, microbial life, mount sharp, NASA, past environment, san diego, united states, yellowknife bay

PASADENA, Calif. — Rising above the present location of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, higher than any mountain in the 48 contiguous states of the United States, Mount Sharp is featured in new imagery from the rover.

A pair of mosaics assembled from dozens of telephoto images shows Mount Sharp in dramatic detail. The component images were taken by the 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens camera mounted on the right side of Curiosity’s remote sensing mast, during the 45th Martian day of the rover’s mission on Mars (Sept. 20, 2012). (more…)

Space Station to Host New Cosmic Ray Telescope

By Guest PostMarch 13, 2013Sciencealan watson, angela olinto, atmosphere, auger project, big bang, center, cosmic ray detector, cosmic ray telescope, decaying particles, delaware, earth atmosphere, earth based detectors, international project, iss, james cronin, japanese experiment module, light emissions, light speed, marshall space flight, NASA, nobel laureate, observatory in argentina, physicist john linsley, space station, stagg field, supermassive black holes, tennis ball, the universe, ultra high energy, university of chicago, university of leeds

UChicago’s Angela Olinto leads U.S. collaboration on international project

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded $4.4 million to a collaboration of scientists at five United States universities and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to help build a telescope for deployment on the International Space Station in 2017.

The U.S. collaboration is part of a 13-nation effort to build the 2.5-meter ultraviolet telescope, called the Extreme Universe Space Observatory. UChicago Prof. Angela Olinto leads the U.S. collaboration. The telescope will search for the mysterious source of the most energetic particles in the universe, called ultra high-energy cosmic rays, from the ISS’s Japanese Experiment Module. The source of these cosmic rays has remained one of the great mysteries of science since physicist John Linsley discovered them more than 50 years ago. These cosmic rays consist of protons and other subatomic scraps of matter that fly through the universe at almost light speed. (more…)

A Window into Europa’s Ocean Right at the Surface

By Guest PostMarch 8, 2013Scienceastronomer, california institute, chemical environment, chemical exchange, epsomite, europa, frozen exterior, galileo mission, icy moon, jet propulsion laboratory, johns hopkins university, kevin hand, liquid ocean, magnesium sulfate salt, mike brown, mineral, NASA, osiris spectrometer, oxidation, pasadena, potassium chlorides, salty ocean, sodium chloride, spectroscopic feature, surface of jupiter, Technology, voyager

If you could lick the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath. A new paper by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, details the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath Europa’s frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.

The finding, based on some of the best data of its kind since NASA’s Galileo mission (1989 to 2003) to study Jupiter and its moons, suggests there is a chemical exchange between the ocean and surface, making the ocean a richer chemical environment. The work is described in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. (more…)

Cassini Spies Bright Venus from Saturn Orbit

By Guest PostMarch 5, 2013Sciencebright venus, cassini, cassini spacecraft, earth, false color version, geometry, high solar phase, image of venus, italian space agency, mars, masses, mercury, NASA, orbit around saturn, rocky compositions, rocky terrestrial planets, saturn atmosphere, saturn orbit, sizes, solar system, sunlight, twin planet

PASADENA, Calif. – A distant world gleaming in sunlight, Earth’s twin planet, Venus, shines like a bright beacon in images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn.

One special image of Venus and Saturn was taken last November when Cassini was placed in the shadow of Saturn. This allowed Cassini to look in the direction of the sun and Venus, and take a backlit image of Saturn and its rings in a particular viewing geometry called “high solar phase.” This observing position reveals details about the rings and Saturn’s atmosphere that cannot be seen in lower solar phase. (more…)

Searching for the Solar System’s Chemical Recipe

By Guest PostMarch 4, 2013Scienceasteroids, basic ingredients, beams of vuv, carbon monoxide, clouds, comets, dust, elements, gas molecules, gas phase photodynamics, genesis mission, hydrogen sulfide, interplanetary ice, isotope ratios, isotopic differences, john heidenreich, mark thiemens, mass spectrometry, mean ocean water, moons, musahid musa ahmed, nanometer wavelength range, NASA, nitrogen, one extra neutron, origin, oxygen 17, oxygen isotope puzzle, photochemistry, physical factors, planets, primitive solar nebula, raindrops, san diego, smow, solar system recipe, standard, subrata chakraborty, teresa jackson, ultraclean aluminum foil, university of california, vacuum ultraviolet light, vuv wavelengths, x axis, y axis

Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Dynamics Beamline points to why isotope ratios in interplanetary dust and meteorites differ from Earth’s

By studying the origins of different isotope ratios among the elements that make up today’s smorgasbord of planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and interplanetary ice and dust, Mark Thiemens and his colleagues hope to learn how our solar system evolved. Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, has worked on this problem for over three decades.

In recent years his team has found the Chemical Dynamics Beamline of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to be an invaluable tool for examining how photochemistry determines the basic ingredients in the solar system recipe. (more…)