NASA SDO: Sun Monitoring Satellite captures 100 millionth image

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun on Jan. 19, 2015. 

The dark areas at the bottom and the top of the image are coronal holes, areas of less dense gas, where solar material has flowed away from the sun. 

Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL

On Jan. 19, 2015, at 12:49 p.m. EST, an instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun.

The instrument is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), which uses four telescopes working parallel to gather eight images of the sun, cycling through 10 different wavelengths -- every 12 seconds.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) images the solar atmosphere in multiple wavelengths to link changes in the surface to interior changes. 

Data includes images of the Sun in 10 wavelengths every 10 seconds. 

Credit: NASA SDO, Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager extends the capabilities of the SOHO/MDI instrument with continual full-disk coverage at higher spatial resolution and new vector magnetogram capabilities.

Credit: NASA SDO, Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory

Between the AIA and two other instruments on board, the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE), SDO sends down a whopping 1.5 terabytes of data a day.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment measures the solar extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) irradiance with unprecedented spectral resolution, temporal cadence, and precision. 

EVE measures the solar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectral irradiance to understand variations on the timescales which influence Earth's climate and near-Earth space.

Credit: NASA SDO, Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory

AIA is responsible for about half of that. Every day it provides 57,600 detailed images of the sun that show the dance of how solar material sways and sometimes erupts in the solar atmosphere, the corona.

In the almost five years since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO has provided images of the sun to help scientists better understand how the roiling corona gets to temperatures some 1000 times hotter than the sun's surface, what causes giant eruptions such as solar flares, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

ESA GOCE: Monitoring Ocean currents

The ocean currents and their speeds (in cm/s) derived from ESA's GOCE data. 

During the mission’s final year, its super-low orbit was lowered even further to obtain improved measurements of Earth’s gravity field, from which information on ocean currents was derived. 

Buoys floating in the oceans were used to validate the above map, proving that this GOCE-based model is more accurate than any other model based on space-based data to date. 

Credit: ESA

The mean dynamic topography (MDT, in cm) of the world’s oceans in the highest resolution ever achieved from space-based data. 

MDT is calculated by taking the mean sea-surface height measured by satellites like Envisat, and subtracting the gravity model from GOCE. 

Red areas show where water levels are above the surface of the gravity model, while blue depicts areas where the water is below. From this, scientists calculated the speed of ocean currents.

A year after the satellite reentered the atmosphere, scientists using data from the GOCE satellite have made a breakthrough in our understanding of ocean currents.

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), mapped variations in Earth’s gravity with unrivalled precision, resulting in the most accurate shape of the ‘geoid’ – a hypothetical global ocean at rest – ever produced.

While the mission is well known for its gravity measurements, the second mission objective as an ‘ocean circulation explorer’ has reached a milestone.

Using GOCE data, scientists have produced the most accurate model of ocean current speeds to date.

To do this, the GOCE geoid was subtracted from the mean sea-surface height measured over a 20-year period by satellites including ESA’s veteran Envisat.

In 2011, GOCE delivered a model of the 'geoid' pictured here. At the time, it was the most accurate ever produced. 

The colours in the image represent deviations in height (–100 m to +100 m) from an ideal geoid. 

The blue shades represent low values and the reds/yellows represent high values. 

Credit: ESA

The result shows the mean dynamic topography of the ocean surface, showing higher- and lower-than-average water levels. Based on this map, ocean currents and their speeds were calculated and validated using in situ buoys.

The result shows that this GOCE-based model is more accurate than any other model based on space data to date.

“The accurate estimate of ocean surface currents, as provided today by the combination of GOCE and altimetry data, is crucial for the better understanding of the ocean dynamics,” said Marie-Hélène Rio from the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the Italian National Research Council.

“In particular, the assimilation of this information into operational ocean monitoring and forecasting systems will provide highly valuable new insight into the present and future state of the ocean.”

This was just one of many GOCE results presented today at the opening of the 5th International GOCE User Workshop at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

Monitoring light patterns: Can Satellite images reveal the impact of the Syrian conflict?

TRES 35-18 Syrian night-light fig.1

An interesting new paper recently published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing which hypothesises that night-time light can be a useful source for monitoring humanitarian crises, such as that unfolding in Syria.

The ongoing Syrian Crisis, which broke out in April 2011, has been a severe humanitarian disaster, with more than 190,000 deaths since the start of the conflict.

However, evaluating the ongoing crisis in Syria is challenging, because reliable and comprehensive witness reports are hard to gather in a war zone.

Therefore, satellite images, as one of the few sources of objective information, are potentially of great importance.

Deren Li Wuhan University

In their recent study published in International Journal of Remote Sensing, Xi Li and Deren Li analysed the effect of the Syrian Crisis on levels of night-time light as a means of evaluating and monitoring the conflict.

By comparing the levels of light in March 2011 and February 2014, (see Fig 1. attached) they found that in all of the provinces, the levels of night-time light had declined sharply following the breakout of the conflict.

Indeed, in most provinces, the level of night-time light decreased by more than 60%.

Notably, the authors also found that the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from each province showed a linear correlation with the level of night-light loss.

This relationship between the number of displaced persons and the drop in night-time light levels may allow for the quantitative estimation of the number of IDPs from other areas of conflict, such as Iraq, where the activities of Islamic State are causing significant civil unrest.

More information: "Can night-time light images play a role in evaluating the Syrian Crisis?", by Xi Li and Deren Li, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 35, Issue 18, pages 6648-6661, 2014, published by Taylor & Francis Group. dx.doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2014.971469

NOAA's GOES-East satellite Monitoring Atlantic Hurricane Gonzalo - Video

On Oct. 15 at 11:15 a.m. EDT NOAA's GOES-East satellite saw Gonzalo had tightly wrapped bands of thunderstorms spiraling into the center of its circulation. 

Credit: NASA /NOAA GOES Project

Hurricane Gonzalo has made the jump to major hurricane status and on Oct. 15 was a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.

NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided imagery of the storm.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Gonzalo is the first category 4 hurricane in the Atlantic basin since Ophelia in 2011.

NOAA's GOES-East satellite provides visible and infrared images of weather from its orbit in a fixed position over the Earth.

On Oct. 15 at 15:15 UTC (11:15 a.m. EDT) GOES saw Gonzalo had tightly wrapped bands of thunderstorms spiraling into the center of its circulation.

The eye of the storm was obscured by high clouds in the image.

NOAA aircraft data and microwave images clearly show concentric eyewalls, with the inner radius of maximum winds now only about 4-5 nautical miles from the center.

At 11 a.m. EDT on Oct. 15, Gonzalo's maximum sustained winds increased to near 130 mph (215 kph) and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) noted that fluctuations in intensity are expected over the next couple of days.

Gonzalo's cloud-covered eye was located near latitude 23.5 north and longitude 68.0 west, about 640 miles (1,025 km) south-southwest of Bermuda.

Gonzalo is moving toward the northwest near 12 mph (19 kph).

The minimum central pressure recently reported by an air force reconnaissance aircraft was 949 millibars.


This animation of visible and infrared images from NOAA's GOES-East satellite shows the movement and strengthening of Gonzalo from a tropical storm on Oct. 13 to a hurricane on Oct. 15 north of Puerto Rico. 

Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project

Tropical storm conditions are possible in Bermuda by late Thursday night, Oct. 16, and hurricane conditions are possible over Bermuda on Friday Oct. 16.

Ocean swells however, will be felt over a much larger area, reached the U.S. east coast on Oct. 16. Large swells generated by Gonzalo are affecting portions of the Virgin Islands, the northern coasts of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and portions of the Bahamas. Swells will reach much of the east coast of the United States and Bermuda on Thursday.

By late Oct. 16, Gonzalo is expected to turn to the northeast and the center is expected to approach Bermuda sometime on Oct. 17.

NASA Aqua MODIS Tracking Super Typhoon Vongfong

Super Typhoon Vongfong pictured from the ISS by NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman.

The MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Super Typhoon Vongfong on Oct. 9 at 04:25 UTC (12:25 a.m. EDT as it moved north through the Philippine Sea. 

Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Vongfong as it tracked through the Philippine Sea on Oct. 9.

The MODIS instrument aboard Aqua captured visible and infrared images of the now Category 4 Super Typhoon.

Two instruments aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided visible and infrared data on the Super Typhoon: The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, respectively.

MODIS captured a visible image of Super Typhoon Vongfong on Oct. 9 at 04:25 UTC (12:25 a.m. EDT) that showed two concentric eyewalls with the inner eye diameter at 26 nautical miles.

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that the eye remains symmetrical with sharp outlines - typical of very intense cyclones.

The AIRS data showed the overall cloud top temperatures had warmed a little since yesterday, Oct. 8, indicating that the uplift in the storm may be weakening.

AIRS also showed a thick band of powerful thunderstorms surrounded Vongfong's eye.

Vongfong weakened to a Category 4 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson scale on Thursday, October 9, with maximum sustained winds near 130 knots (149.6 mph/240.8 kph), down from a Category 5 typhoon on Oct. 8.

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center predict slow weakening over the next several days.

A colorised satellite photo shows Super Typhoon Vongfong spinning in the western Pacific Ocean.

Credit Photo: NASA /NOAA /CIRA /RAMMB

Vongfong was centered near 20.6 north and 129.5 east, about 384 nautical miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.

It is moving to the north-northwest at 7 knots (8 mph/12.9 kph) and generating 44 foot (13.4 meter) high seas. For warnings and watches, visit the Japan Meteorological Agency website.

Vongfong is forecast to continue moving north through the Philippine Sea and is expected to pass just to the east of Kadena Air Base, then track over Amami Oshima before making landfall in Kyushu and moving over the other three big islands of Japan.

Residents of all of these islands should prepare for typhoon conditions beginning on October 10.

The AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared data on Super Typhoon Vongfong and showed powerful thunderstorms (purple) circled the center in a wide band on Oct. 9, 2014. 

Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

South Pole Telescope: Monitoring Cosmic Microwave Background using Superconductors

At the South Pole Telescope, scientists measure Cosmic Microwave Background still traveling across space from the early days of the universe, using superconductors. 

Credit: Daniel Luong-Van, National Science Foundation.

For Argonne physicist Clarence Chang, looking backward in time to the earliest ages of the universe is all in a day's work.

Clarence Chang

Chang helped design and operate part of the South Pole Telescope, a project that aims a giant telescope at the night sky to track tiny bits of radiation that are still traveling across the universe from the period just after it was born.

"Basically, what we're looking at is the afterglow light of the Big Bang," Chang said.

In the wake of the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe was just hot, dense particles and light.

As the universe got older, it began to spread out and cool down over time, and the intense light from that period traveled across space.

It's still traveling, hitting us all the time, and it has a very distinct radiation signature.

"We call this the Cosmic Microwave Background, and it is essentially a snapshot of the universe as it looked about 400,000 years after the Big Bang," Chang said.

There's still a lot we don't know about the makeup of the early universe.

Particularly mysterious are the dark matter and dark energy that appear to make up 95% of the universe, but about which we know very little.

Mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background can shed some light on these dark forms.

The Cosmic Microwave Background photons are absorbed by water, so in order to catch them, you need a very dry, flat and preferably cold space, which narrows it down to just two locations on Earth.

One is the Chilean mountains, where we have a different sky mapping project underway, and the other is the South Pole.

The South Pole telescope is more than 30 feet across; Chang and colleagues at Argonne High Energy Physics Dept. helped build its camera.

At the core of the detector technology is an extremely thin superconducting film. Although superconductors can carry an electrical charge perfectly, they are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature.

When thermal radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background hits the camera, it heats the material up slightly, which changes the conductivity of the film. This lets physicists record the energy coming from that particular part of the sky.

"So far we've mapped about 2,500 square degrees of the sky," he said, "so there's just 37,500 to go."

Physicists monitoring huge solar event - Magnetic Field Reversal - Video

The sun's magnetic field is poised to reverse its polarity. The effects of the event will be closely monitored by Stanford solar physicists. Credit: Kurt Hickman

The sun's magnetic field is poised to reverse its polarity. The effects of the event, which occurs every 11 years, will ripple throughout the solar system and be closely monitored by Stanford solar physicists.

Every 11 years, the sun undergoes a complete makeover when the polarity of its magnetic field – its magnetic north and south – flips. The effects of this large-scale event ripple throughout the solar system.

Although the exact internal mechanism that drives the shift is not entirely understood, researchers at Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory have monitored the sun's magnetic field on a daily basis since 1975 and can identify the process as it occurs on the sun's surface. This will be the fourth shift the observatory has monitored.

New polarity builds up throughout the 11-year solar cycle as sunspots – areas of intense magnetic activity – appear as dark blotches near the equator of the sun's surface.

Over the course of a month, a sunspot spreads out, and gradually that magnetic field migrates from the equator to one of the sun's poles.


As the polarity moves toward the pole, it erodes the existing, opposite polarity, said Todd Hoeksema, a solar physicist at Stanford since 1978 and director of the Wilcox Solar Observatory.

The magnetic field gradually reduces toward zero, and then rebounds with the opposite polarity.

"It's kind of like a tide coming in or going out," Hoeksema said. "Each little wave brings a little more water in, and eventually you get to the full reversal."

The effects of this event are widespread: The area of space where the sun's magnetic field exerts its influence – called the heliosphere – stretches well beyond Pluto, past NASA's Voyager probes near the edge of interstellar space.

The sun is also typically at the peak of its activity during a magnetic field reversal, which, in addition to an increased number of sunspots, is marked by a surge in solar flares and mass ejections.

The sun's changing magnetic field and the bursts of charged particles can interact with Earth's own magnetic field, one manifestation of which is a noticeable uptick in the occurrence and range of auroras.

Earth's magnetic field can also affect major electronic systems, Hoeksema said, such as power distribution grids and GPS satellites, so scientists are keen to monitor the heliosphere.

"We also see the effects of this on other planets," Hoeksema said. "Jupiter has storms, Saturn has auroras, and this is all driven by activity of the sun."

NASA Aura Image: Antarctic ozone hole monitoring report

The Antarctic ozone hole reached its maximum single-day area for 2013 on Sept. 16. 

The ozone hole (purple and blue) is the region over Antarctica with total ozone at or below 220 Dobson units (a common unit for measuring ozone concentration). 

Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The ozone hole that forms each year in the stratosphere over Antarctica was slightly smaller in 2013 than average in recent decades, according to NASA satellite data.

The ozone hole is a seasonal phenomenon that starts to form during the Antarctic spring (August and September).

The September-October 2013 average size of the hole was 8.1 million square miles (21 million square kilometers).

For comparison, the average size measured since the mid-1990s when the annual maximum size stopped growing is 8.7 million square miles (22.5 million square kilometers).

However, the size of the hole in any particular year is not enough information for scientists to determine whether a healing of the hole has begun.

"There was a lot of Antarctic ozone depletion in 2013, but because of above average temperatures in the Antarctic lower stratosphere, the ozone hole was a bit below average compared to ozone holes observed since 1990," said Paul Newman, an atmospheric scientist and ozone expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The ozone hole forms when the sun begins rising again after several months of winter darkness.

Polar-circling winds keep cold air trapped above the continent, and sunlight-sparked reactions involving ice clouds and chlorine from manmade chemicals begin eating away at the ozone.

Most years, the conditions for ozone depletion ease before early December when the seasonal hole closes.

Levels of most ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere have gradually declined as the result of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to protect the ozone layer by phasing out production of ozone-depleting chemicals.

As a result, the size of the hole has stabilized, with variation from year to year driven by changing meteorological conditions.



Daily images from Jul. 1 to Oct. 15 show the evolution of the 2013 ozone hole. The ozone hole maximum occurred on Sept. 16, 2013. 

Image Credit: NASA/Robert Simmon/Ozone Hole Watch

The single-day maximum area this year was reached on Sept. 16 when the maximum area reached 9.3 million square miles (24 million square kilometers), about equal to the size of North America.

The largest single-day ozone hole since the mid-1990s was 11.5 million square miles (29.9 million square kilometers) on Sept. 9, 2000.

Science teams from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been monitoring the ozone layer from the ground and with a variety of instruments on satellites and balloons since the 1970s.

These ozone instruments capture different aspects of ozone depletion. The independent analyses ensure that the international community understands the trends in this critical part of Earth's atmosphere.

The resulting views of the ozone hole have differences in the computation of the size of the ozone hole, its depth, and record dates.

NASA observations of the ozone hole during 2013 were produced from data supplied by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite and the Ozone Monitoring and Profiler Suite instrument on the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite.

Long-term satellite ozone-monitoring instruments have included the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, the second generation Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment series of instruments, and the Microwave Limb Sounder.

NOAA GOES-R Satellite: Instrument package to assess space weather ready for delivery

A multimillion dollar University of Colorado Boulder instrument package to study space weather has passed its pre-installation testing and is ready to be incorporated onto a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite for a 2015 launch.

Designed and built by CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the instrument suite known as the Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors (EXIS), is the first of four identical packages that will fly on four NOAA weather satellites slated for launch beginning in 2015.

EXIS consists of an Extreme Ultraviolet Sensor (EUVS), an X-Ray sensor (XRS) and a combined EUVS/XRS electronics box (EXEB) to control subsystems and to do command and data handling interface with the GOES-R spacecraft. (Courtesy LASP)

CU-Boulder's EXIS will measure energy output from the sun that can affect satellite operations, telecommunications, GPS navigation and power grids on Earth as part of NOAA's next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R).

NASA issued the contract with CU-Boulder on behalf of NOAA to design, build, test, deliver and scientifically support the four instrument packages for roughly $95 million, said LASP Senior Research Scientist Frank Eparvier, principal investigator on the project.

The EXIS instrument package will be delivered to Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. in Littleton, Colo., for installation on the spacecraft in the coming months.

"We are excited because we developed and built all new technology for the EXIS instrument package for the GOES-R satellite," said Eparvier.

"We already have a close working relationship with NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, and these extremely sensitive instruments should help scientists better understand solar events and help to mitigate the effects of space weather on Earth."

EXIS consists of two LASP instruments, including XRS, an X-ray sensor that can determine the strength of solar flares and provide rapid alerts to scientists, said Eparvier.

Large solar flares, equivalent to the explosion of millions of atomic bombs, can trigger "proton events" that send charged atomic particles flying off the sun and into Earth's atmosphere in just minutes.

They can damage satellites, trigger radio blackouts and even threaten the health of astronauts by penetrating spacecraft shielding, he said.

NASA's HyspIRI Mission: Seeing the forest and the trees

Temperature information was collected simultaneously by the MASTER instrument. 

Red areas are composed of minerals with high silica, such as urban areas, while darker and cooler areas are composed of water and heavy vegetation. 

Credit: NASA

To Robert Green, light contains more than meets the eye: It contains fingerprints of materials that can be detected by sensors that capture the unique set of reflected wavelengths.

Scientists have used the technique, called imaging spectroscopy, to learn about water on the moon, minerals on Mars and the composition of exoplanets.

Green's favorite place to apply the technique, however, is right here on the chemically rich Earth, which is just what he and colleagues achieved this spring during NASA's Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) airborne campaign.

"We have ideas about what makes up Earth's ecosystems and how they function," said Green, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and principal investigator of the campaign's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) instrument.

"But a comprehensive understanding requires us to directly measure these things and how they change over landscapes and from season to season."

Toward that goal, scientists and engineers ultimately plan to launch the HyspIRI satellite—a mission recommended by the 2007 National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey—to determine the spectral and thermal characteristics of the world's ecosystems, which are sensitive to changes in vegetation health, as well as detecting and understanding changes in other surface phenomena including volcanoes, wildfires and droughts.

Prior to flying the sensors in space, however, preparatory science investigations are underway using similar sensor technology installed on NASA's ER-2, a high-altitude aircraft based at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif.

The first season of the HyspIRI airborne campaign concludes on April 25 after about a month of flights that spanned the state. Additional sets of California flights are planned for this summer and then this fall.

"We are collecting data over six zones across very diverse regions of California, from the coast to high-elevation terrain, from alpine areas to deserts to coastal ecosystems, and from agricultural to urban landscapes," Green said.

For example, the campaign's first test flight on March 29 collected data along a series of parallel flight lines.

The resulting image covers about six miles in width and almost 100 miles in length. One flight happened to pass over the San Andreas Fault. Inclusion of the fault in the flight plan was incidental, but it was a "spectacular" flight nonetheless, Green said.

NASA CINDI Mission: Monitoring the Ionosphere

When high frequency radio waves, such as those used for the Global Positioning System (GPS), travel through a disturbed layer of Earth’s electrically charged atmosphere, the ionosphere, they can be disrupted. 

Credit: U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)

On April 16, 2008, a suite of NASA instruments was launched into space to study a unique region of Earth’s upper atmosphere: the electrically charged region called the ionosphere.

The instruments, known collectively as CINDI (Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigation), fly aboard an Air Force Research Laboratory satellite called C/NOFS (Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System) to study this region that hovers some 60 to 400 miles above Earth.

The ionosphere is crucial for modern communications. Low-frequency radio waves bounce off it to travel from one part of Earth to another.

Various satellites, including the global positioning system (GPS), send high-frequency radio waves through the ionosphere down to receivers on Earth. In this region the right conditions exist to allow incoming energy from the sun to knock electrons off the atoms.

So the area seethes with charged particles moving under forces of both conventional winds and of electric fields that drive the particles perpendicular to the magnetic field lines surrounding Earth.

The ionosphere changes constantly: between night and day, with the seasons, between the equator and the poles, and with every incoming burst of radiation from the sun.

These simulations of the nighttime, low latitude ionosphere – representing altitudes of about 120 to 750 miles above Earth -- show how "chimneys" of lower density form at the base of the ionosphere and then rise up, creating branches at ever smaller scales. 

These perturbations can disturb radio waves moving through the region. 

Each colour shows a different density of material. 

The colour green corresponds to low-density regions. 

Red represents the densest region of the ionosphere, over 100 times more dense. 

Credit: John Retterer

Small changes in the ionosphere, at night, for example, can simply garble the radio waves – a phenomenon known as scintillation. But at worst, an event such as a giant solar flare can black out radio transmissions completely.

Rob Pfaff

“All the space assets we have come to rely on, in one way or another propagate radio waves through this region of Earth’s atmosphere so we need to understand it better,” says Rob Pfaff, project scientist for CINDI at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

“Our goals with CINDI are to determine why the region becomes irregular, and, ultimately, to be able to forecast when and where it will be irregular.”

Studying the ionosphere is like trying to understand a very complicated lava lamp, in which blobs of different materials move up and down in response to changes in temperature.

In the case of the ionosphere, scientists want to understand the kinds of heat and energy affecting particle movement and how these motions interact and rely on each other.

Every piece of data, such as where certain particles appear and what causes areas of lower and higher density, represents a significant advance toward predicting change in the region.

Over the last five years, CINDI has gleaned information about the distribution in height of different kinds of particles, about how winds sweep through the atmosphere in response to events on the sun, and what causes density changes in both the charged and neutral particles in the ionosphere.

One of the early observations by CINDI was of the top of the ionosphere layer, which is dominated by hydrogen ions near dawn.

The middle layer of the area is dominated by oxygen ions. In 2008, CINDI found that the transition region, where there is an equal number of both particles, was located about 370 miles up, much closer to Earth than expected.

Since CINDI launched at a time of low solar activity -- a period of the sun’s approximate 11-year cycle known as solar minimum – the mission has had the chance to observe how the ionosphere changes as the sun’s activity ramps up to solar maximum, currently expected in late 2013.

Over five years of watching, this oxygen/hydrogen transition region has now moved up in space to over 430 miles in altitude, providing an indicator of how Earth’s atmosphere swells and expands in response to increased energy coming in from the sun.

Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (TB) treatment a Global threat

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria says that strains of tuberculosis with resistance to multiple drugs could spread widely and highlight an annual need of at least $1.6 billion in international funding for treatment and prevention of the disease.

Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO, and Dr. Mark Dybul, executive director of the Global Fund, said that the only way to carry out the urgent work of identifying all new cases of tuberculosis, while simultaneously making progress against the most serious existing cases, will be to mobilize significant funding from domestic sources and international donors.

With the overwhelming majority of international funding for tuberculosis coming through the Global Fund, they said, it is imperative that efforts to raise money be effective this year. Growing alarm about the threat of multi-drug resistant TB, also known as MDR-TB, is making that even more pressing.

“We are treading water at a time when we desperately need to scale up our response to MDR-TB,” says Chan. “We have gained a lot of ground in TB control through international collaboration, but it can easily be lost if we do not act now.”

WHO and the Global Fund have identified an anticipated gap of $1.6 billion in annual international support for the fight against tuberculosis in 118 low- and middle-income countries on top of an estimated $3.2 billion that could be provided by the countries themselves.

Filling this gap could enable full treatment for 17 million TB and multidrug-resistant TB patients and save 6 million lives between 2014-2016.

“It is critical that we raise the funding that is urgently needed to control this disease,” says Dybul. “If we don’t act now, our costs could skyrocket. It is invest now or pay forever.”

Chan and Dybul spoke to the media in Geneva in advance of World TB Day on March 24, which commemorates the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch discovered the mycobacterium that causes tuberculosis.

Read more on TB Research in the European Respiratory Journal

NASA Aura Satellite Pinpoints Causes of 2011 Arctic Ozone Hole

Maps of ozone concentrations over the Arctic come from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite. 

The left image shows March 19, 2010, and the right shows the same date in 2011. 

March 2010 had relatively high ozone, while March 2011 has low levels. 

Credit: NASA/Goddard.

A combination of extreme cold temperatures, man-made chemicals and a stagnant atmosphere were behind what became known as the Arctic ozone hole of 2011, a new NASA study finds.

Even when both poles of the planet undergo ozone losses during the winter, the Arctic's ozone depletion tends to be milder and shorter-lived than the Antarctic's.

This is because the three key ingredients needed for ozone-destroying chemical reactions -chlorine from man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), frigid temperatures and sunlight- are not usually present in the Arctic at the same time: the northernmost latitudes are generally not cold enough when the sun reappears in the sky in early spring. Still, in 2011, ozone concentrations in the Arctic atmosphere were about 20 percent lower than its late winter average.

The new study shows that, while chlorine in the Arctic stratosphere was the ultimate culprit of the severe ozone loss of winter of 2011, unusually cold and persistent temperatures also spurred ozone destruction.

Furthermore, uncommon atmospheric conditions blocked wind-driven transport of ozone from the tropics, halting the seasonal ozone resupply until April.

"You can safely say that 2011 was very atypical: In over 30 years of satellite records, we hadn't seen any time where it was this cold for this long," said Susan E. Strahan, an atmospheric scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and main author of the new paper, which was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

"Arctic ozone levels were possibly the lowest ever recorded, but they were still significantly higher than the Antarctic's," Strahan said.

"There was about half as much ozone loss as in the Antarctic and the ozone levels remained well above 220 Dobson units, which is the threshold for calling the ozone loss a 'hole' in the Antarctic - so the Arctic ozone loss of 2011 didn't constitute an ozone hole."

The majority of ozone depletion in the Arctic happens inside the so-called polar vortex: a region of fast-blowing circular winds that intensify in the fall and isolate the air mass within the vortex, keeping it very cold.

Most years, atmospheric waves knock the vortex to lower latitudes in later winter, where it breaks up. In comparison, the Antarctic vortex is very stable and lasts until the middle of spring. But in 2011, an unusually quiescent atmosphere allowed the Arctic vortex to remain strong for four months, maintaining frigid temperatures even after the sun reappeared in March and promoting the chemical processes that deplete ozone.

The vortex also played another role in the record ozone low.

"Most ozone found in the Arctic is produced in the tropics and is transported to the Arctic," Strahan said. "But if you have a strong vortex, it's like locking the door -- the ozone can't get in."

SPIONs Track Functioning of Stem Cells Inside Body

UK's Liverpool Scientists have developed a method to track the stem cells in our body, according to a new report.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have developed new methods to track stem cells and the changes that happen to them after they have been in the body for a significant period of time.

Scientists "labeled" the cells with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) before they were administered to the patients.

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans clearly showed movement of the stem cells and the scientists could determine whether the stem cells reached their intended target or not.

However, scientists warn that conditions within the body's cells can lead to the degradation of SPIONs and reduce the ability of MRI scans to pick up on their signal in the long-term.

To overcome this drawback, scientists are developing new methods to visualise SPION's in the cells before they enter the body to learn their performance in the long-term.

Photothermal technique, a unique optical imaging system is used to improve SPION labelling so that particles survive for longer and have minimal impact on the function of the transplanted cells.

"In order to fully explore this potential, however, more technological developments are needed to understand how stem cells behave in the body after transplantation.

If we can't monitor stem cells effectively, it can have serious implications for patient health. Studies have already shown that if cells migrate to the circulatory system, beyond their target organ or tissue site, then it can cause inflammation in the body," said Dr Lara Bogart, scientist at the University's Institute of Integrative Biology in a statement.

"Labelling stem cells is hugely valuable to tracking their movements in the body, but we need to know more about how the particles used interact with stem cells.

Using new imaging systems we can work out their precise location in the cell and how they behave over time.

We hope to use this information to improve understanding of the MRI signal that tracks SPIONs once stem cells have been transplanted," she added.

Stem cells are used to treat conditions such as leukaemia and have the potential to treat many more diseases and disorders where patient survival is reliant on organ and tissue donation.

Probing hydrogen under extreme conditions

How hydrogen--the most abundant element in the cosmos--responds to extremes of pressure and temperature is one of the major challenges in modern physical science.

Moreover, knowledge gleaned from experiments using hydrogen as a testing ground on the nature of chemical bonding can fundamentally expand our understanding of matter.

New work from Carnegie scientists has enabled researchers to examine hydrogen under pressures never before possible. Their work is published online in Physical Review Letters.

To explore hydrogen in this new domain, the scientists developed new techniques to contain hydrogen at pressures of nearly 3 million times normal atmospheric pressure (300 Gigapascals) and to probe its bonding and electronic properties with infrared radiation. They used a facility that Carnegie manages and operates at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in partnership with NSLS.

Observing hydrogen's behavior under very high pressures has been a great challenge for researchers, because it is in a gas state under normal conditions. It is known that it has three solid molecular phases. But the structures and properties of highest-pressure phases are unknown.

For example, a transition to a phase that occurs at about 1.5 million times atmospheric pressure (150 Gigapascals) and at low temperatures has been of particular interest. But there have been technological hurdles in examining hydrogen at much higher pressures using static compression techniques.

It has been speculated that under at high pressures, hydrogen transforms to a metal, which means it conducts electricity. It could even become a superconductor or a superfluid that never freezes--a completely new and exotic state of matter.

NASA GOES-13: Devastating Texas Tornadoes Seen by Satellite

Tornadoes tore through northeast Texas yesterday (April 3), in an outbreak of severe weather that was captured by a fleet of satellites designed to monitor the situation from space.

At least six tornadoes were reported in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from mid-afternoon to early evening on April 3, according to officials at the National Weather Service.

This image, taken by the GOES-13 (or GOES-East) satellite, shows thick clouds blanketing the Dallas metropolitan area just after 2 p.m. local time yesterday.

"Severe thunderstorms containing very large hail, damaging winds and frequent cloud to ground lightning are continuing across the eastern two-thirds of north Texas," the National Weather Service alerted at the time.

"Strong tornadoes are possible with discrete supercell thunderstorms that occur out ahead of the main line of the storms."

The Texas tornadoes left a trail of heavy damage, but no fatalities were immediately reported. Still, at least 15 people are known to be injured, according to news reports.

Large hailstones from the storm also wreaked havoc, and hundreds of flights to and from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport were rerouted or canceled.

In some areas, hailstones reportedly measured more than 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.

The last time the Dallas metropolitan area was hit by strong tornadoes was in 2000, according to meteorologists.

The National Weather Service uses the GOES satellites to study weather patterns and the climate.

The GOES system (short for Geostationary Satellite system) is made up of four Earth-watching observatories that help with storm tracking and weather forecasting.

Tepco space camera detects radiation

 Image credit: TEPCO

The device, the ’super-wide angle Compton Camera’, uses technology that originates from space exploration, namely, it monitors radiation in the same manner that the ASTRO-H satellite (also known as NEXT or New X-ray Telescope) is able to.

Japanese researchers have developed a new way to detect and monitor potentially dangerous radiation.
Scientists based at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency have been working in partnership with the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA).

According to a recent press release, the collaborative project designed to develop radiation levels more efficiently has been a success.

In the aftermath of Fukushima and subsequent concerns over radiation and nuclear reactor safety, the team have designed a new gamma camera that can be used to help alleviate some of the these worries.

Radiation is detected via this spectrum and sensor-based technology. The camera is capable of creating images of gamma ray-emitting radioactive particles though advanced sensors with a 180 degree capability.

What makes the camera useful in relation to more land-bound activities is that it can detect radiation that has collected at high altitudes.

These can include area such as building roofs — where it is normally difficult for measurements to be collected with existing survey meters.
 

The Compton Camera has been trialed this year to detect radiation levels in a field test.

At the Kusano area of Iitate village in Fukushima, the camera measured both radiation and concentration levels.

According to the release, the trial was successful — resulting in a broad area and higher degree of accuracy in radiation detection than other gamma cameras are able to detect.

In conjunction with TEPCO, JAXA and JAEA will develop the camera towards feasible use in radiaoactive material monitoring and decontamination work.

Not only can it be used in dangerous areas (such as at the Fukushima nuclear power plant) but it could also be used to monitor close-by areas and assess their safety levels.

ESA TIGER Initiative: Managing our water resources from space

Satellite data-derived land cover of the Nile Basin based on ESA’s 2009 GlobCover map.

Credits: Nile Basin Initiative

Today is UN World Water Day, and satellite observations are indispensible for monitoring our water resources. ESA’s TIGER initiative is supporting Africa in monitoring precious water assets by exploiting satellite information.

The demand for water is growing inexorably. Access to water is vital – not only for drinking, but also for agriculture, energy and sanitation.

In certain regions of the world, water scarcity is caused by population growth, climate conditions and increasing climate variability, economic development or urbanisation.

At the sixth World Water Forum held last week in Marseille, France, experts from over 170 countries met to discuss solutions for sustainable water management.

Satellite observations of our planet were widely acknowledged as an indispensable tool for collecting information on available water resources.

This is especially true for areas like cross-boundary river basins, such as the Nile basin and its 11 countries.

Responding to this need for information on water, ESA’s TIGER initiative is running projects and building capacity to use space technology for managing water resources in direct partnership with several African and international organisations, such as the African Ministers’ Council on Water, UNESCO-IHP, African Water Facility, UN-ECA and the Canadian Space Agency.

ESA and Soyuz launches sharp-eyed Pleiades satellite

A Russian Soyuz rocket has launched from French Guiana - only the second such vehicle to fly out of the territory's new Sinnamary spaceport.

The Soyuz put six satellites in orbit, including France's new Pleiades-1 high-resolution imaging spacecraft.

This satellite is designed to take pictures that resolve features on the ground as small as 50cm across.

The capability will put it on a par with the leading US commercial systems operated by GeoEye and DigitalGlobe.

Lift-off occurred on schedule at 23:03 local time, Friday (02:03 GMT, Saturday), with Pleiades-1 being dropped off in its 700km-high polar orbit some 55 minutes later.

The 970kg satellite is the result of a near-decade-long programme in the French space agency (Cnes) to develop one of the most powerful Earth observation systems in the world.

The spacecraft's sensor actually has a resolution of 70cm, but image processing will recover detail that is around the half-metre mark.


Pleiades-1 will be followed by Pleiades-2 in the coming year

Pleiades carries gyroscopes that allow it to swivel its telescope in quick time, enabling it to acquire a strip, or mosaic, of images around its target in a single pass overhead.

The Pleiades spacecraft has been assembled by Astrium, Europe's largest space company, with its instrument supplied by Thales Alenia Space (France).

It will have both a civilian and military role, and a number of European countries (Austria, Belgium, Spain and Sweden) have part-funded the project to get access to its pictures.

Pleiades-1 will be followed by Pleiades-2 on a separate Soyuz launch in 2012.

"The fact that we will have two, twin satellites operating in a phased orbit separated by 180 degrees will give us something very powerful - a daily re-visit capacity.

It means we will be able to gather information every day on any part of the globe," explained Charlotte Gabriel Robez, Pleiades project manager with Astrium Geo-information Services.

"This is key because it allows us to tackle applications such as rescue or crisis management, in the aftermath of an earthquake for example," she told BBC News.

The commercial market for very high resolution imagery has become dominated in recent years by the American companies GeoEye and DigitalGlobe, which benefit from multi-billion-dollar contracts with the US intelligence agencies.

Astrium Geo-information Services is hoping these agencies' voracious appetite for pictures will leave a productive hole in the market for Pleiades' products.

The Soyuz rocket flew its inaugural mission from Europe's Sinnamary spaceport in October. A dedicated new launch pad has been constructed in the Guianese jungle for the Russian vehicle.

 

A simulated image of London's 02 Arena. The picture shows the detail Pleiades should be able to retrieve

NASA Needs Strategic Plan to Manage Orbital Debris Efforts

Although NASA's meteoroid and orbital debris programs have responsibly used their resources, the agency's management structure has not kept pace with increasing hazards posed by abandoned equipment, spent rocket bodies, and other debris orbiting the Earth, says a new report by the National Research Council.

NASA should develop a formal strategic plan to better allocate resources devoted to the management of orbital debris.

In addition, removal of debris from the space environment or other actions to mitigate risks may be necessary.

The complexity and severity of the orbital debris environment combined with decreased funding and increased responsibilities have put new pressures on NASA, according to the report. Some scenarios generated by the agency's meteoroid and orbital debris models show that debris has reached a "tipping point," with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures, the report notes.

In addition, collisions with debris have disabled and even destroyed satellites in the past; a recent near-miss of the International Space Station underscores the value in monitoring and tracking orbital debris as precisely as possible.

"The current space environment is growing increasingly hazardous to spacecraft and astronauts," said Donald Kessler, chair of the committee that wrote the report and retired head of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office.

"NASA needs to determine the best path forward for tackling the multifaceted problems caused by meteoroids and orbital debris that put human and robotic space operations at risk."

The strategic plan NASA develops should provide a basis for prioritizing efforts and allocating funds to the agency's numerous meteoroid and orbital debris programs, the report says.

Currently, the programs do not have a single management and budget structure that can efficiently coordinate all of these activities. The programs are also vulnerable to changes in personnel, as nearly all of them are staffed by just one person.

The strategic plan, which should consider short- and long-term objectives, a schedule of benchmark achievements, and priorities among them, also should include potential research needs and management issues. The report lists these.

Removal of orbital debris introduces another set of complexities, the report adds, because only about 30 percent of the objects can be attributed to the United States.

"The Cold War is over, but the acute sensitivity regarding satellite technology remains," explained committee vice chair George Gleghorn, former vice president and chief engineer for the TRW Space and Technology Group.

Although NASA has identified the need for removing debris, the agency and U.S. government as a whole have not fully examined the economic, technological, political, and legal considerations, the report says.