NASA HAVOC: Manned mission to Venus Possible

HAVOC. Credit: NASA Langley Research Center

NASA's Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate has issued a report outlining a possible way for humans to visit Venus, rather than Mars, by hovering in the atmosphere instead of landing on the surface.

The hovering vehicle, which they call a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), would resemble a blimp with solar panels on top, and would allow people to do research just 50 kilometers above the surface of the planet.

Most everyone knows that NASA wants to send people to Mars, that planet also gets most of the press. Mars is attractive because it looks more like Earth and is relatively close to us.

The surface of Venus on the other hand, though slightly closer, is not so attractive, with temperatures that can melt lead and atmospheric pressure 92 times that of Earth.

There's also that thick carbon dioxide atmosphere with sulphuric acid clouds, lots of earthquakes, volcanoes going off and terrifying lightning bolts.

Perhaps humans could ride through the upper atmosphere of Venus in a solar-powered airship. Dale Arney and Chris Jones, from Nasa's Space Analysis Branch, propose that it may make sense to go to Venus before we ever send humans to Mars.

So, why would anyone rather go to Venus than Mars? Because of far lower radiation and much better solar energy.

No one wants to go the surface of Venus, at least not anytime soon, instead, researchers at NASA are looking into the possibility of sending people to hover in the sky above the planet, conducting research in a far less dangerous place than even on the surface of Mars.

At 50 kilometers up, an HAVOC would experience just one atmosphere of atmospheric pressure and temperatures averaging just 75 degrees Celsius, with radiation levels equivalent to those in Canada.

Astronauts on Mars, on the other hand would experience 40 times the amount of radiation typically faced back here on Earth, which suggests they'd have to live deep underground to survive, a problem that scientists have not yet solved.

Read the full article here

NASA UAVSAR: An airborne research team focuses on Andean volcanoes

This false-colour image of Peru's Ubinas volcano was acquired on April 14, 2014, by NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR). 

Located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the city of Arequipa, Ubinas is Peru's most active volcano. 

UAVSAR flew exactly the same flight path over Ubinas in 2013. 

By combining the images from the two years, researchers will produce detailed maps of surface motions that can improve models of volcanic deformation. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A NASA-developed airborne imager called a synthetic aperture radar took a detailed look at volcanoes in Central and South America during an Earth science study in late April and early May 2014.

The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was flown on NASA's C-20A.

The 29-day deployment ended May 6 when the aircraft returned to its base in Palmdale, California, after 19 flights totaling 97 hours in the air.

This is the second consecutive year the UAVSAR team has conducted a campaign to study sites in Central and South America.

Many of the flights imaged the Andean volcanic belt located in western South America.

"By combining images acquired in 2013 with the 2014 images, researchers will produce detailed surface motion measurements to improve volcanic deformation models," said Naiara Pinto, JPL's UAVSAR science coordinator.

NASA's C-20A features a high-precision autopilot designed and developed by engineers at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, allowing the aircraft to fly the same flight lines this spring as those flown in 2013 within 15 feet (4.5 meters) or closer.

With the autopilot engaged, the synthetic aperture radar is able to acquire repeat-pass data that can measure land-surface changes within fractions of an inch (centimeters).

NASA's C-20A aircraft crew preparing for flight from Tocumen International Airport in Panama City, Panama. 

The aircraft was deployed to Central and South America for a research study using JPL's UAVSAR airborne radar, located in an underbelly pod (note red cover). 

Credit: NASA/Armstrong Flight Research Center

In coordination with the volcano studies, the agency's C-20A gathered data over Amazonian forests in Peru, agricultural sites in Chile and glaciers on the Chilean/Argentinian border.

All of these research projects involve Latin American institutions, including universities and hazard monitoring agencies.

NASA Messenger: Volcanoes on Mercury

NASA Messenger: Lava-flooded craters and large expanses of smooth volcanic plains on Mercury’s surface. 

Credit: NASA

Mercury has long been a mystery to scientists.

Until recently, knowledge of the planet was limited to the grey, patchy landscape revealed by the Mariner 10 probe, NASA's first mission to Mercury in the mid-1970s.

Mariner 10's photographs showed little detail of how the surface was formed. Like Venus, Earth and Mars, it was clear that Mercury's rough crust reflected millions of years of aerial bombardment by comets and meteorites.

Gaps in our understanding of the innermost planet have included some basic knowledge such as the planet's geology, how it was formed and evolved, and whether its interior was still active.

But now NASA's return mission, MESSENGER, is allowing scientists to confront the full complexity of Mercury's surface.

Amid the countless craters caused by meteor collisions, the landscape has marks that were not made by such collisions.

Using the increased resolution of MESSENGER's cameras, scientists have identified previously hidden volcanic activity, which changes what we know about the planet's formation, and even the history of our solar system.

The detailed pictures showed that Mercury seemed to have smooth, rimless depressions that were obviously not produced by meteor impacts.

They were surrounded by bright, reddish material, believed to have been left by pyroclastic flows – indicating that the depressions were volcanic vents.

The presence of pyroclastic material – which is composed of volcanic ash – showed that the eruptions had been explosive.

In some cases, the debris had been ejected more than 50km from the volcanic vents themselves. This is a remarkable distance, as it means that Mercury's volcanoes must have been much more powerful than previously thought.

Mariner 10

The force of an eruption is determined by volatile gases beneath the planet's surface.

Initially dissolved in magma, as they reach the surface, these gases rapidly swell and shred the magma into tiny shards called pyroclasts.

This means that, in general, the more volatiles there are in the magma feeding an eruption, the more explosive it will be.

To shoot debris so far, the magma in Mercury's crust would need to have been brimming with volatile gases.

The latest signs of volcanic deposits from MESSENGER suggest that nearly 1.5% of the parent magma may have been occupied by volatiles.

For gases this is a large fraction, because as they rise towards the surface their volume increases dramatically.

Water Found on Dwarf Planet Ceres, May Erupt from Ice Volcanoes

An artist's impression of water outgassing from two sources on the dwarf planet Ceres, which is also the largest asteroid in the solar system. 

Credit: IMCCE-Observatoire de Paris/CNRS/Y.Gominet, B. Carry

Astronomers have discovered direct evidence of water on the dwarf planet Ceres in the form of vapour plumes erupting into space, possibly from volcano-like ice geysers on its surface.

Using European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, scientists detected water vapor escaping from two regions on Ceres, a dwarf planet that is also the largest asteroid in the solar system.

The water is likely erupting from icy volcanoes or sublimation of ice into clouds of vapour.

Artist's impression of Ceres. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

"This is the first clear-cut detection of water on Ceres and in the asteroid belt in general," said Michael Küppers of the European Space Agency, Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain, leader of the study detailed today (Jan. 22) in the journal Nature.

The research has implications for how Ceres formed, and supports models that suggest the planets moved around a lot within the solar system during its formation, Küppers told reporters.

ESA Scientists have suspected that there is a substantial amount of water on Ceres for about 30 years.

An earlier study found hints of water in the form of hydroxide, a product of water's dissociation, on Ceres in 1991, but the finding wasn't confirmed by later observations.

Now, Küppers and his ESA colleagues have confirmed the finding, using the ESA Herschel Space Observatory's spectrometer to look for signals of water.

Clouds of water vapour around Ceres absorbed the heat that radiates from the dwarf planet, which Herschel's instrument detected.

The team found that Ceres produces about 2×10^26 molecules, or 13 lbs. (6 kilograms), of water vapour per second from its surface.

Read the full article on the ESA Herschel portal

More Information: 'Localized sources of water vapour on the dwarf planet Ceres': Nature 505, 525–527 (23 January 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12918

Two Indonesian volcanoes erupt, flights disrupted

Local residents watch as a giant plume of steam and ash rise and hot lava rolls from the crater of Mount Sinabung volcano, during an eruption seen from Karo district on Indonesia's Sumatra island, on November 5, 2013

Two volcanoes erupted in Indonesia on Monday, with one forcing flights to be rerouted and stopping thousands of people who had already been evacuated from returning home.

Mount Sinabung on western Sumatra island, which has been erupting on and off since mid-September, shot volcanic ash around 8,000 metres (26,000 feet) into the air, the Geological Disaster Mitigation and Volcanology Centre said.

"The transport ministry is redirecting flights away from a certain path because of Mount Sinabung's latest eruption," ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said in a statement.

It also meant that more than 5,000 people who had recently been evacuated from the area around Sinabung due to its eruptions were unable to return home.

On the main island of Java, Indonesia's most active volcano, Mount Merapi, spewed a column of ash and smoke some 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) in the morning, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, chief of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.

He said the eruption, which was triggered by small earthquakes, prompted around 600 families to rush to evacuation posts but they were returning home as there was no imminent threat.

This file photo shows the mount Merapi volcano in Sleman, Yogyakarta, during an eruption on January 30, 2011

Mount Merapi killed more than 350 people in a series of violent eruptions in late 2010 when it also destroyed entire villages.

Indonesia has dozens of active volcanoes and straddles major tectonic fault lines known as the "Ring of Fire" between the Pacific and Indian oceans.

In August five people were killed and hundreds evacuated when a volcano on a tiny island in East Nusa Tenggara province erupted.

Volcano Redoubt: Volcanoes 'scream' at ever-higher pitches until they erupt

Redoubt Volcano on March 31, 2009. View to the east of the summit crater of the volcano, heavily covered with deposits from recent eruptions, many of which were preceded by harmonic tremor.

Credit: Game McGimsey

It is not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption.

They can reach a point of such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor that resembles sound made by various types of musical instruments, though at frequencies much lower than humans can hear.

A new analysis of an eruption sequence at Alaska's Redoubt Volcano in March 2009 shows that the harmonic tremor glided to substantially higher frequencies and then stopped abruptly just before six of the eruptions, five of them coming in succession.

Alicia Hotovec-Ellis

"The frequency of this tremor is unusually high for a volcano, and it's not easily explained by many of the accepted theories," said Alicia Hotovec-Ellis, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences.

Documenting the activity gives clues to a volcano's pressurization right before an explosion.

That could help refine models and allow scientists to better understand what happens during eruptive cycles in volcanoes like Redoubt, she said.

The source of the earthquakes and harmonic tremor isn't known precisely. Some volcanoes emit sound when magma – a mixture of molten rock, suspended solids and gas bubbles – resonates as it pushes up through thin cracks in the Earth's crust.

But Hotovec-Ellis believes in this case the earthquakes and harmonic tremor happen as magma is forced through a narrow conduit under great pressure into the heart of the mountain.

The thick magma sticks to the rock surface inside the conduit until the pressure is enough to move it higher, where it sticks until the pressure moves it again.

Each of these sudden movements results in a small earthquake, ranging in magnitude from about 0.5 to 1.5, she said. As the pressure builds, the quakes get smaller and happen in such rapid succession that they blend into a continuous harmonic tremor.

"Because there's less time between each earthquake, there's not enough time to build up enough pressure for a bigger one," Hotovec-Ellis said. "After the frequency glides up to a ridiculously high frequency, it pauses and then it explodes."

She is the lead author of a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research that describes the research. Co-authors are John Vidale of the UW and Stephanie Prejean and Joan Gomberg of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The pause in the harmonic tremor frequency increase just before the volcanic explosion is the main focus of the Nature Geoscience paper.

"We think the pause is when even the earthquakes can't keep up anymore and the two sides of the fault slide smoothly against each other," Hotovec-Ellis said.

Upward-gliding tremor immediately before a volcanic explosion also has been documented at the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica and Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

"Redoubt is unique in that it is much clearer that that is what's going on," Hotovec-Ellis said. "I think the next step is understanding why the stresses are so high."

More information: Paper: DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1879

Pavlof and Cleveland volcanoes erupting in Alaska

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) photographed this striking view of Pavlof Volcano on May 18, 2013. 

The oblique perspective from the ISS reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is often obscured by the top-down view of most remote sensing satellites. 

Situated in the Aleutian Arc about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, Pavlof began erupting on May 13, 2013. 

The volcano jetted lava into the air and spewed an ash cloud 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) high. 

When photograph ISS036-E-2105 (top) was taken, the space station was about 475 miles south-southeast of the volcano (49.1° North latitude, 157.4° West longitude). 

The volcanic plume extended southeastward over the North Pacific Ocean. (Credit: NASA)

More Information
Visit the AVO website for updated alerts and activity reports on Pavlof and Cleveland volcanoes.

Virtually travel to these locations through an AVO webcam of Cleveland volcano and a FAA webcam located in Cold Bay about 37 miles west of Pavlof.

Jupiter's Moon Io: Volcanoes are in the wrong place

This five-frame sequence of images from NASA's New Horizons mission captures the giant plume from Io's Tvashtar volcano. 

Snapped by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter in 2007, this first-ever movie of an Io plume clearly shows motion in the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 km (205 miles) above the moon's surface. 

Only the upper part of the plume is visible from this vantage point. 

The plume's source is 130 km (80 miles) below the edge of Io's disk, on the far side of the moon. 

Io's hyperactive nature is emphasized by the fact that two other volcanic plumes are also visible off the edge of Io's disk: Masubi at the 7 o'clock position, and a very faint plume, possibly from the volcano Zal, at the 10 o'clock position. 

Jupiter illuminates the night side of Io, and the most prominent feature visible on the disk is the dark horseshoe shape of the volcano Loki, likely an enormous lava lake. 

Boosaule Mons, which at 18 km (11 miles) is the highest mountain on Io and one of the highest mountains in the solar system, pokes above the edge of the disk on the right side. 

The five images were obtained over an 8-minute span, with two minutes between frames, from 23:50 to 23:58 Universal Time on 1 March 2007. 

Io was 3.8 million km (2.4 million miles) from New Horizons. 

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, with hundreds of volcanoes, some erupting lava fountains up to 250 miles high.

However, concentrations of volcanic activity are significantly displaced from where they are expected to be based on models that predict how the moon's interior is heated, according to NASA and European Space Agency researchers.

Io is caught in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's massive gravity and the smaller but precisely timed pulls from two neighboring moons that orbit further from Jupiter – Europa and Ganymede.

Io orbits faster than these other moons, completing two orbits every time Europa finishes one, and four orbits for each one Ganymede makes.

This regular timing means that Io feels the strongest gravitational pull from its neighboring moons in the same orbital location, which distorts Io's orbit into an oval shape.

This in turn causes Io to flex as it moves around Jupiter. For example, as Io gets closer to Jupiter, the giant planet's powerful gravity deforms the moon toward it and then, as Io moves farther away, the gravitational pull decreases and the moon relaxes.

The flexing from gravity causes tidal heating—in the same way that you can heat up a spot on a wire coat hanger by repeatedly bending it, the flexing creates friction in Io's interior, which generates the tremendous heat that powers the moon's extreme volcanism.

The question remains regarding exactly how this tidal heating affects the moon's interior. Some propose it heats up the deep interior, but the prevailing view is that most of the heating occurs within a relatively shallow layer under the crust, called the asthenosphere.

The asthenosphere is where rock behaves like putty, slowly deforming under heat and pressure.

NASA Airborne Radar to Study Volcanoes in Alaska and Japan

This UAVSAR interferogram shows active volcano Mount St. Helens (left) and dormant volcano Mount Adams, both in Washington state. 

The sensor collected data for this image during flights in July 2009 and August 2010 to compute the surface deformation that could indicate activity in the volcanoes' magma. 

No deformation was evident during this period. 

Credit: NASA image

This study builds on UAV SAR research of U.S. West Coast and Hawaiian volcanoes acquired from 2009 through 2011 and additional observations of Central and South American volcanoes gathered in 2010 and 2011.

SAR Interferogram Kilauea

The deployment of NASA's C-20A (G-III) began Oct. 2 when the aircraft departed NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., imaging volcanoes in the Western United States en route to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash.

After refueling, the aircraft will travel on to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska.

The sensor will image volcanoes in Alaska, including those in the Aleutian Islands, before arriving at Yokota Air Force Base near Tokyo, Japan.

Yokota is the staging location for science missions to collect data about volcanoes on several islands in Japan that pose a hazard to nearby populations.

On its return, the aircraft will repeat the route, acquiring data from the opposite viewing direction, before arriving back at its base in Palmdale Oct. 11.

NASA's C-20A (G-III) banks over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., carrying the UAVSAR underbelly pod, in preparation for studying U.S. and international volcanoes. (NASA / Lori Losey)

The aircraft features a high-precision autopilot designed and developed by engineers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. 

The Precision Platform Autopilot guides the aircraft using a kinematic differential Global Positioning System developed by JPL and the aircraft's inertial navigation system to enable it to fly repeat paths to an accuracy of 15 feet or less. 

With the precision autopilot engaged, the synthetic aperture radar is able to acquire repeat-pass data that can measure land-surface changes within millimeters.

UAVSAR provides a measurement system that complements satellite-based observations by providing rapid revisits and imaging of active volcanoes to better understand their deformation prior to, during or after an eruption.

In addition to the NASA study of volcanoes, the UAVSAR team is working with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency scientists to define cross-calibration sites, including flight lines over disaster and forested areas, between the UAVSAR and the PISAR-L2 airborne radars.