JAXA ALOS-2 "DAICHI-2": Japan satellite to survey disasters, rain forests

Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 "DAICHI-2" (ALOS-2)

Japan is scheduled to launch a new mapping satellite on Saturday that will be used to survey damage from natural disasters and changes affecting rain forests.

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 "DAICHI-2" (ALOS-2) will be released by the nation's H-IIA rocket, which will lift off shortly after noon (0300 GMT) Saturday, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

ALOS-2 will be able to monitor scars left by natural disasters as well as progress made in reconstruction, JAXA said.

The service is important for Japan, which sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and experiences 20 percent of all major earthquakes felt by humans every year.

"DAICHI-2"

Memories are still fresh of the deadly 9.0-magnitude earthquake in March 2011, which released a killer tsunami that destroyed the northern Pacific coast and triggered the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

The volcanic island nation is routinely hit by earthquakes and typhoons, with scientists expecting Mount Fuji to erupt sometime soon.

The satellite is different from spy satellites that Japan already has to monitor risk states such as North Korea.

The new satellite, nicknamed "DAICHI-2", will "conduct a health check mainly of the Earth's land areas in detail," JAXA project manager Shinichi Suzuki said in a statement.

JAXA H-IIA rocket

DAICHI-2 will collect data related to deformation of the Earth's crust, but also the impact of floods and landslides, he said.

The satellite's predecessor was used to monitor damage caused by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Suzuki said.

The device uses a special radar to observe the planet's surface even at night, during bad weather and even through vegetation, JAXA said.

JAXA plans to use the new satellite to regularly study tropical rain forests, which are difficult to observe because of the thick clouds that frequently cover them. It will also be used to observe snow and ice conditions in the polar areas.

ESA Herschel Survey: Completion largest census of dust in local galaxies

Collage of galaxies in the Herschel Reference Survey at infrared /submillimetre wavelengths by Herschel (left) and at visible wavelengths from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS, right).

The Herschel image is coloured with blue representing cold dust and red representing warm dust; the SDSS image shows young stars in blue and old stars in red. 

Together, the observations plot young, dust-rich spiral/irregular galaxies in the top left, with giant dust-poor elliptical galaxies in the bottom right.

ESA /Herschel /HRS-SAG2 and HeViCS Key Programmes /Sloan Digital Sky Survey / L. Cortese (Swinburne University)

The largest census of dust in local galaxies has been completed using data from ESA’s Herschel space observatory, providing a huge legacy to the scientific community.

Cosmic dust grains are a minor but fundamental ingredient in the recipe of gas and dust for creating stars and planets but despite its importance, there is an incomplete picture of the dust properties in galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

Key questions include how the dust varies with the type of galaxy, and how it might affect our understanding of how galaxies evolve.

Before concluding its observations in April 2013, Herschel provided the largest survey of cosmic dust, spanning a wide range of nearby galaxies located 50–80 million light-years from Earth.

The catalogue contains 323 galaxies with varying star formation activity and different chemical compositions, observed by Herschel’s instruments across far-infrared and submillimetre wavelengths.

A sample of these galaxies is displayed in a collage, arranged from dust-rich in the top left to dust-poor in the bottom right.

The dust-rich galaxies are typically spiral or irregular, whereas the dust-poor ones are usually elliptical.

Blue and red colours represent cooler and warmer regions of dust, respectively.

Dust is gently heated across a range of temperatures by the combined light of all of the stars in each galaxy, with the warmest dust being concentrated in regions where stars are being born.

For comparison, the galaxies are also shown in visible light images obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS.

Here, blue corresponds to young stars – hot, massive stars that burn through their fuel very quickly and are therefore short-lived.

Conversely, red stars are older population – they are less massive and cooler, and therefore live for longer.

The Herschel observations allow astronomers to determine how much light is emitted by the dust as a function of wavelength, providing a means to study the physical properties of the dust.

NASA WISE survey finds thousands of new stars, but no 'Planet X'

A nearby star stands out in red in this image from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey (DSS). 

Image credit: DSS /NASA/JPL-Caltech

After searching hundreds of millions of objects across our sky, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up no evidence of the hypothesized celestial body in our solar system commonly dubbed "Planet X."

Researchers previously had theorized about the existence of this large, but unseen celestial body, suspected to lie somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto.

In addition to "Planet X," the body had garnered other nicknames, including "Nemesis" and "Tyche."

This recent study, which involved an examination of WISE data covering the entire sky in infrared light, found no object the size of Saturn or larger exists out to a distance of 10,000 astronomical units (au), and no object larger than Jupiter exists out to 26,000 au.

One astronomical unit equals 93 million miles. Earth is 1 au, and Pluto about 40 au, from the Sun.

Kevin Luhman

"The outer solar system probably does not contain a large gas giant planet, or a small, companion star," said Kevin Luhman of the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University, author of a paper 'A SEARCH FOR A DISTANT COMPANION TO THE SUN WITH WISE' in the Astrophysical Journal describing the results.

But searches of the WISE catalogue are not coming up empty. A second study reveals several thousand new residents in our Sun's "backyard," consisting of stars and cool bodies called brown dwarfs.

Ned Wright

"Neighbouring star systems that have been hiding in plain sight just jump out in the WISE data," said Ned Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the principal investigator of the mission.

WISE survey finds thousands of new stars, but no 'Planet X'

Data from NASA's WISE, has found no evidence for a hypothesized body sometimes referred to as "Planet X." 

Credit: Penn State University

The second WISE study, which concentrated on objects beyond our solar system, found 3,525 stars and brown dwarfs within 500 light-years of our Sun.

Davy Kirkpatrick

"We're finding objects that were totally overlooked before," said Davy Kirkpatrick of NASA's Infrared and Processing Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Kirkpatrick is lead author of the second paper, also in the Astrophysical Journal.

Some of these 3,525 objects also were found in the Luhman study, which catalogued 762 objects.

The WISE mission operated from 2010 through early 2011, during which time it performed two full scans of the sky, with essentially a six-month gap between scans.

The survey captured images of nearly 750 million asteroids, stars and galaxies. In November 2013, NASA released data from the AllWISE program, which now enables astronomers to compare the two full-sky surveys to look for moving objects.

In general, the more an object in the WISE images appears to move over time, the closer it is. This visual clue is the same effect at work when one observes a plane flying low to the ground versus the same plane flying at higher altitude.

Though traveling at the same speed, the plane at higher altitude will appear to be moving more slowly.

Searches of the WISE data catalogue for these moving objects are uncovering some of the closest stars.

The discoveries include a star located about 20 light-years away in the constellation Norma, and as reported last March, a pair of brown dwarfs only 6.5 light-years away, making it the closest star system to be discovered in nearly a century.

Despite the large number of new solar neighbors found by WISE, "Planet X" did not show up.

Previous speculations about this hypothesized body stemmed in part from geological studies that suggested a regular timing associated with mass extinctions on Earth.

The idea was that a large planet or small star hidden in the farthest reaches of our solar system might periodically sweep through bands of outer comets, sending them flying toward our planet.

The Planet X-based mass extinction theories were largely ruled out even prior to the new WISE study.

WISE survey finds thousands of new stars, but no 'Planet X'

The third closest Binary star system to the sun, called WISE J104915.57-531906, is at the center of the larger image, which was taken by NASA's WISE. 

Credit: NASA /JPL /Gemini Observatory /AURA /NSF

Other theories based on irregular comet orbits had also postulated a Planet X-type body.

The new WISE study now argues against these theories as well.

Both of the WISE searches were able to find objects the other missed, suggesting many other celestial bodies likely await discovery in the WISE data.

"We think there are even more stars out there left to find with WISE. We don't know our own sun's backyard as well as you might think," said Ned Wright.

WISE was put into hibernation upon completing its primary mission in 2011.

In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

NEOWISE will also characterise previously known asteroids and comets to better understand their sizes and compositions.

NASA WISE mission finds lost asteroid family members

This artist's conception shows how families of asteroids are created. 

Over the history of our solar system, catastrophic collisions between asteroids located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter have formed families of objects on similar orbits around the sun. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Astronomers used millions of infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE all-sky survey, called NEOWISE, to identify 28 new asteroid families.

The snapshots also helped place thousands of previously hidden and uncategorized asteroids into families for the first time.

The findings are a critical step in understanding the origins of asteroid families, and the collisions thought to have created these rocky clans.

"NEOWISE has given us the data for a much more detailed look at the evolution of asteroids throughout the solar system," said Lindley Johnson, the program executive for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"This will help us trace the NEOs back to their sources and understand how some of them have migrated to orbits hazardous to the Earth."

The main asteroid belt is a major source of near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are those asteroids and comets that come within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of Earth's path around the sun.

Some near-Earth objects start out in stable orbits in the main asteroid belt, until a collision or gravitational disturbance flings them inward like flippers in a game of pinball.

The NEOWISE team looked at about 120,000 main belt asteroids out of the approximately 600,000 known.

They found that about 38,000 of these objects, roughly one third of the observed population, could be assigned to 76 families, 28 of which are new.

In addition, some asteroids thought to belong to a particular family were reclassified.

An asteroid family is formed when a collision breaks apart a large parent body into fragments of various sizes.

Some collisions leave giant craters. For example, the asteroid Vesta's southern hemisphere was excavated by two large impacts.

Other smash-ups are catastrophic, shattering an object into numerous fragments, as was the case with the Eos asteroid family.

The cast-off pieces move together in packs, traveling on the same path around the sun, but over time the pieces become more and more spread out.

More information: Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/770/1/7

NASA IceBridge Survey Flight Over Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Fjord

This image of Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Fjord with Kap Atholl in the background was taken during an Operation IceBridge survey flight in April, 2013. 

Sea ice coverage in the fjord ranges from thicker, white ice seen in the background, to thinner grease ice and leads showing open ocean water in the foreground.

In March 2013, NASA's Operation IceBridge scientists began another season of research activity over Arctic ice sheets and sea ice. 

IceBridge, a six-year NASA mission, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown.

It will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. 

These flights will provide a yearly, multi-instrument look at the behavior of the rapidly changing features of the Greenland and Antarctic ice.

› Read more about IceBridge

Image Credit: NASA / Michael Studinger

Read More about NASA IceBridge Mission here

NASA Icebridge Mission: P-3B Starts the Day

On March 21, 2013, the P-3B waits outside the hangar at Thule Air Base with the Greenland Ice sheet in the background.

IceBridge, a six-year NASA mission, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown. 

It will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. 

These flights will provide a yearly, multi-instrument look at the behaviour of the rapidly changing features of the Greenland and Antarctic ice.

Data collected during IceBridge will help scientists bridge the gap in polar observations between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) -- in orbit since 2003 -- and ICESat-2, planned for early 2016. 

ICESat stopped collecting science data in 2009, making IceBridge critical for ensuring a continuous series of observations.

IceBridge will use airborne instruments to map Arctic and Antarctic areas once a year. IceBridge flights are conducted in March-May over Greenland and in October-November over Antarctica. Other smaller airborne surveys around the world are also part of the IceBridge campaign.

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Michael Studinger

NASA MARS Curiosity: Starts Drilling

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Hazcam).

The drill was positioned for pre-load testing, and the Hazcam recorded this image during the 170th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Jan. 27, 2013).>br />
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is sizing up a target rock and flexing its robotic arm ahead of its first-ever drilling activity on the Red Planet, which should take place in the coming days.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover pressed down on the rock in four different places with its arm-mounted drill Monday (Jan. 27). These "pre-load" tests should allow mission engineers to see if the amount of force applied matches predictions, researchers said.

The six-wheeled robot won't be ready to start boring into the rock until it completes several additional hardware tests and other checks, which should keep the rover busy through at least the end of this week, they added.

GRACE the Robot Fish: Data Gathering ROV from MSU

A team of MSU researchers has developed a robotic fish that can swim and glide long distances while gathering data such as water quality and temperature. 

Photo by G.L. Kohuth.

A high-tech robotic fish hatched at Michigan State University has a new look. A new skill and a new name.

MSU scientists have made a number of improvements on the fish, including the ability to glide long distances, which is the most important change to date.

The fish now has the ability to glide through the water practically indefinitely, using little to no energy, while gathering valuable data that can aid in the cleaning of our lakes and rivers.

Designed and built by Xiaobo Tan, MSU associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team, the fish is equipped with an array of sensors that not only allow it to travel autonomously, but also measure water temperature, quality and other pertinent facts.



"Swimming requires constant flapping of the tail," Tan said, "which means the battery is constantly being discharged and typically wouldn't last more than a few hours."

The disadvantage to gliding, he said, is that it is slower and less maneuverable.

"This is why we integrated both locomotion modes - gliding and swimming - in our robot," Tan said. "Such integration also allows the robot to adapt to different environments, from shallow streams to deep lakes, from calm ponds to rivers, with rapid currents."

The robot's ability to glide is achieved through a newly installed pump that pushes water in and out of the fish, depending on whether the scientists want the robot to ascend or descend.

Also, the robot's battery pack sits on a kind of rail that moves backward and forward, in sync with the pumping action, to allow the robot to glide through water on a desired path.

The robotic fish now has a name: Grace, which stands for "Gliding Robot ACE."

Late last year Tan and his team took Grace for a test drive on the Kalamazoo River, where it exceeded all expectations.

"She swam at three sites along the river and wirelessly sent back sensor readings," Tan said.

"I'm not sure, but we may have set a world record - demonstrating robotic fish-based sampling with commercial water-quality sensors in a real-world environment."

NASA ARES: Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey Aircraft proposed for MARS

The Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) was a proposal by NASA's Langley Research Center to build a powered aircraft that would fly on Mars.

The ARES team sought to be selected and funded as a NASA Mars Scout Mission for a 2011 or 2013 launch window. However, the MAVEN mission was chosen instead.




ARES would have travelled to Mars compactly folded into a protective aeroshell; upon entry in the thin atmosphere, the capsule would have deployed a parachute to decelerate, followed by ARES release at altitude.

Among other things, the aircraft would have investigated the atmosphere and weak magnetic field.

Propulsion
Propulsion remained undetermined. The two main criteria used to evaluate the propulsion system were flight range and implementation risk.

Possible propulsion technologies were electrical motors, internal combustion and rocket systems. The aircraft was intended to fly for about one hour.

See also
Mars Scout Program

NASA WISE: Asteroid Caught Marching Across Tadpole Nebula

This infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, showcases the Tadpole Nebula, a star-forming hub in the Auriga constellation about 12,000 light-years from Earth.

As WISE scanned the sky, capturing this mosaic of stitched-together frames, it happened to catch an asteroid in our solar system passing by.

The asteroid, called 1719 Jens, left tracks across the image, seen as a line of yellow-green dots in the boxes near center. A second asteroid was also observed cruising by.

But that's not all that WISE caught in this busy image -- two natural satellites orbiting above WISE streak through the image, appearing as faint green trails. This Tadpole region is chock full of stars as young as only a million years old -- infants in stellar terms -- and masses over 10 times that of our sun.

It is called the Tadpole nebula because the masses of hot, young stars are blasting out ultraviolet radiation that has etched the gas into two tadpole-shaped pillars, called Sim 129 and Sim 130. These "tadpoles" appear as the yellow squiggles near the center of the frame.

The knotted regions at their heads are likely to contain new young stars. WISE's infrared vision is helping to ferret out hidden stars such as these.

The 1719 Jens asteroid, discovered in 1950, orbits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The space rock, which has a diameter of 19 kilometers (12 miles), rotates every 5.9 hours and orbits the sun every 4.3 years.

Twenty-five frames of the region, taken at all four of the wavelengths detected by WISE, were combined into this one image. The space telescope caught 1719 Jens in 11 successive frames. Infrared light of 3.4 microns is color-coded blue: 4.6-micron light is cyan; 12-micron-light is green; and 22-micron light is red.

WISE is an all-sky survey, snapping pictures of the whole sky, including everything from asteroids to stars to powerful, distant galaxies.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

NASA Landsat Program - Chesapeake Bay

USGS has released a new mosaic of the Chesapeake Bay.

Using six Landsat 5 images collected in July 2009 and 2011 a beautiful, seamless mosaic of the Chesapeake Bay region was created by the USGS Landsat team.

The Washington D.C.-Baltimore-Philadelphia-New York City corridor can be clearly seen (look for silvery purple) as can the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays and the coastal Atlantic barrier islands from Fishermans Island, Virginia to Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

NASA Shuttle Atlantis performs Back Flip

The Expedition 23 crew snapped this imageof the underside of Atlantis' crew cabin, during a survey of the approaching space shuttle prior to docking with the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA