July 30, 2007, 8:07 PM CT

Remote Sensing Symposium

The International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, entitled 'Sensing and Understanding our Planet,' took place from 23 to 27 July 2007 in Barcelona, Spain, bringing together more than 1400 participants. ESA personnel presented Earth Explorer missions, especially the upcoming Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission aimed at advancing our knowledge of the water cycle.

The International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) is a major annual event sponsored by the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society to bring scientists, engineers and community leaders from all over the world to discuss the latest research findings and up-to-date technology for better understanding Earth.

IGARSS 2007 General Chairman, Prof. Ignasi Corbella, said: "Information gathered by all sensors and techniques must be wisely used mainly to understand our Earth. This will improve prediction of natural disasters or global climate change and provide tools to mitigate their consequences.

"As experts on the leading-edge technologies of Earth Observation (EO), we should play a prominent role in achieving these goals. This is our contribution to the important task of assuring people of all around the world access to resources for their subsistence without endangering the fragile equilibrium of our planet"......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

July 8, 2007, 10:24 PM CT

Life elsewhere in Solar System

The search for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond should include efforts to detect what researchers sometimes refer to as "weird" life -- that is, life with an alternative biochemistry to that of life on Earth -- says a new report from the National Research Council. The committee that wrote the report observed that the fundamental requirements for life as we generally know it -- a liquid water biosolvent, carbon-based metabolism, molecular system capable of evolution, and the ability to exchange energy with the environment -- are not the only ways to support phenomena recognized as life. "Our investigation made clear that life is possible in forms different than those on Earth," said committee chair John Baross, professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, Seattle.

The report emphasizes that "no discovery that we can make in our exploration of the solar system would have greater impact on our view of our position in the cosmos, or be more inspiring, than the discovery of an alien life form, even a primitive one. At the same time, it is clear that nothing would be more tragic in the American exploration of space than to encounter alien life without recognizing it".

The tacit assumption that alien life would utilize the same biochemical architecture as life on Earth does means that researchers have artificially limited the scope of their thinking as to where extraterrestrial life might be found, the report says. The assumption that life requires water, for example, has limited thinking about likely habitats on Mars to those places where liquid water is believed to be present or have once flowed, such as the deep subsurface. However, as per the committee, liquids such as ammonia or formamide could also work as biosolvents -- liquids that dissolve substances within an organism -- albeit through a different biochemistry. The recent evidence that liquid water-ammonia mixtures may exist in the interior of Saturn's moon Titan suggests that increased priority be given to a follow-on mission to probe Titan, a locale the committee considers the solar system's most likely home for weird life......... Posted by: Jaison      Read more         Source

July 4, 2007, 5:00 AM CT

Search for 'weird' life

A new report from the National Research Council, examines the search for life elsewhere in the universe and whether the fundamental requirements for life as we generally know it are the only ways phenomena recognized as "life" could be supported beyond our planet.

Whether "weird" life, as researchers sometimes refer to life with a different biochemical structure than life here, should be considered in the search for extraterrestrial life is looked at in the report......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

June 27, 2007, 6:20 PM CT

Ready for NASA climate change, ozone mission in tropics

A high-flying NASA mission over Costa Rica and Panama in July and August should help researchers better understand how tropical storms influence global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion, says a University of Colorado at Boulder professor who is one of two mission researchers for the massive field campaign.

Brian Toon, chair of CU-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department, said the $12 million effort will mobilize in San Jose, Costa Rica, and involve about 400 scientists, students and support staff operating three NASA aircraft, seven satellites and a suite of other instruments. The team is targeting the gases and particles that flow out of the top of the vigorous storm systems that form over the warm tropical ocean, said Toon.

The warm summer waters of the Pacific Ocean in Central and South America are a breeding ground for heat-driven convective storms targeted by the mission, said NASA officials. Such tropical systems are the major mechanism for Earth's system to loft air into the upper troposphere and stratosphere and are characterized primarily by cumulus clouds with large dense anvils and wispy cirrus clouds.

Known as the Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling mission, or TC4, The expedition runs from July 16 through Aug. 8 and is NASA's largest field campaign in several years. The tropical storm systems under study pump air more than 40,000 feet above the surface, where they can influence the make-up of the stratosphere, home of Earth's protective ozone layer......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

June 20, 2007, 11:08 AM CT

Pipeline of Space Scientists

Students and researchers from around the globe and from throughout the U.S. have come to New York this month to participate in the fourth annual NASA Space Radiation Summer School at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. The group will work in Brookhaven Lab's Medical Department and NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) - a unique facility that simulates the harsh radiation environment of outer space - to study the possible risks astronauts may face during future long-term space flights. Thirty-nine students have participated in the program to date.

As NASA plans a mission to Mars, an outpost on the Moon, and exploration of near-Earth asteroids, a number of potential health risks to astronauts remain unknown. It is vitally important to learn how human space travelers will be affected by deep-space radiation and how best to protect them from harm. Space radiobiology, a relatively new field that blends the disciplines of physics and biology, addresses these questions.

"While there is a wealth of data describing the effects of conventional radiation like x-rays, the same is not true for the types of radiation present in space. It is essential to define the potential risks of exposure to space radiation and, if necessary, develop effective countermeasures to permit safe missions of longer durations than in the past," explained Peter Guida, Medical Department Liaison Scientist for this program at Brookhaven Lab. Guida is working with Eleanor Blakely of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the 2007 NASA Summer School Director......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

June 20, 2007, 10:59 AM CT

New View of Doomed Star

Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone's throw - astronomically speaking - from Earth at a distance of only about 7,500 light years. The star is believed to be consuming its nuclear fuel at an incredible rate, while quickly drawing closer to its ultimate explosive demise. When Eta Carinae does explode, it will be a spectacular fireworks display seen from Earth, perhaps rivaling the moon in brilliance. Its fate has been foreshadowed by the recent discovery of SN2006gy, a supernova in a nearby galaxy that was the brightest stellar explosion ever seen. The erratic behavior of the star that later exploded as SN2006gy suggests that Eta Carinae may explode at any time.

Eta Carinae, a star between 100 and 150 times more massive than the Sun, is near a point of unstable equilibrium where the star's gravity is almost balanced by the outward pressure of the intense radiation generated in the nuclear furnace. This means that slight perturbations of the star might cause enormous ejections of matter from its surface. In the 1840s, Eta Carinae had a massive eruption by ejecting more than 10 times the mass of the sun, to briefly become the second brightest star in the sky. This explosion would have torn most other stars to pieces but somehow Eta Carinae survived......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

June 13, 2007, 8:34 AM CT

NASA satellites watch as China constructs giant dam

Some call it the eighth wonder of world. Others say it's the next Great Wall of China. Upon completion in 2009, the Three Gorges Dam along Chinas Yangtze River will be the world's largest hydroelectric power generator and one of the few man-made structures so enormous that it's actually visible to the naked eye from space. NASA's Landsat satellites have provided detailed, vivid views of the dam since construction began in 1994.

The Yangtze River is the third largest river in the world, stretching more than 3,900 miles across China before reaching its mouth near Shanghai. Historically, the river has been prone to massive flooding, overflowing its banks about once every ten years. During the 20th century alone, Chinese authorities estimate that some 300,000 people were killed from Yangtze River floods. The dam is designed to greatly improve flood control on the river and protect the 15 million people and 3.7 million acres of farmland in the lower Yangtze flood plains.

Observations from the NASA-built Landsat satellites provide an overview of the dam's construction. The first image shows the region previous to start of the project. By 2000, construction along each riverbank was underway, but sediment-filled water still flowed through a narrow channel near the rivers south bank. The 2004 images show limited development of the main wall and the partial filling of the reservoir, including numerous side canyons. By mid-2006, construction of the main wall was completed and a reservoir more than 2 miles (3 kilometers) across had filled just upstream of the dam......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

June 10, 2007, 9:24 PM CT

Sound Waves to Ignite Sun's Ring of Fire

Sound waves escaping the sun's interior create fountains of hot gas that shape and power a thin region of the sun's atmosphere which appears as a ruby red "ring of fire" around the moon during a total solar eclipse, as per research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.

The results are presented today at the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division meeting in Hawaii.

This region, called the chromosphere because of its color, is largely responsible for the deep ultraviolet radiation that bathes the Earth, producing the atmosphere's ozone layer.

It also has the strongest solar connection to climate variability.

"The sun's interior vibrates with the peal of millions of bells, but the bells are all on the inside of the building," said Scott McIntosh of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., lead member of the research team. "We've been able to show how the sound can escape the building and travel a long way using the magnetic field as a guide".

The new result also helps explain a mystery that's existed since the middle of the last century -- why the sun's chromosphere (and the corona above) is much hotter than the visible surface of the star. "It's getting warmer as you move away from the fire instead of cooler, certainly not what you would expect," said McIntosh......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

March 15, 2007, 9:20 PM CT

Global 'sunscreen' has likely thinned

A new NASA study has found that an important counter-balance to the warming of our planet by greenhouse gases sunlight blocked by dust, pollution and other aerosol particles appears to have lost ground.

The thinning of Earths "sunscreen" of aerosols since the early 1990s could have given an extra push to the rise in global surface temperatures. The finding, published recently in the journal Science, may lead to an improved understanding of recent climate change. In a related study published last week, scientists found that the opposing forces of global warming and the cooling from aerosol-induced "global dimming" can occur at the same time.

"When more sunlight can get through the atmosphere and warm Earth's surface, you're going to have an effect on climate and temperature," said lead author Michael Mishchenko of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York. "Knowing what aerosols are doing globally gives us an important missing piece of the big picture of the forces at work on climate".

The study uses the longest uninterrupted satellite record of aerosols in the lower atmosphere, a unique set of global estimates funded by NASA. Scientists at GISS created the Global Aerosol Climatology Project by extracting a clear aerosol signal from satellite measurements originally designed to observe clouds and weather systems that date back to 1978. The resulting data show large, short-lived spikes in global aerosols caused by major volcanic eruptions in 1982 and 1991, but a gradual decline since about 1990. By 2005, global aerosols had dropped as much as 20 percent from the relatively stable level between 1986 and 1991......... Posted by: Brooke      Read more         Source

March 8, 2007, 7:58 AM CT

Exploring Earth's Deepest Sinkhole

Researchers return this week to the world's deepest known sinkhole, Cenote Zacaton in Mexico, to resume tests of a NASA-funded robot called DEPTHX, designed to survey and explore for life in one of Earth's most extreme regions and potentially in outer space.

If all goes well with this second round of testing and exploration, the team will return in May for a full-scale exploration of the Zacaton system.

Sinking more than 1,000 feet, Zacaton has only been partially mapped and its true depth remains unknown.

During eight years of research, doctoral student Marcus Gary and hydrogeology professor Jack Sharp from The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences discovered the system's unusual hydrothermal nature is analogous to liquid oceans under the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Technology developed to explore the sinkholes could be applied to future space probes of Europa, where researchers think that deep cracks and holes in the ice offer a chance of finding extraterrestrial life.

The technology could also be used to explore Earth's ice-bound polar lakes, which hold clues to the origins of life on Earth.

Microbes which appear to be new to science have been discovered floating in deep water and lining rocks in Zacaton. Far below sunlight's ability to penetrate, they may get their energy from nutrients welling up from hot springs. Gary and others speculate that previously undocumented life may await discovery in the murky depths......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source