Aug 5 2015
From The Space Library
Release 15-164 New Online Exploring Tools Bring NASA's Journey to Mars to New Generation
On the three-year anniversary of the Mars landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover, NASA is unveiling two new online tools that open the mysterious terrain of the Red Planet to a new generation of explorers, inviting the public to help with its journey to Mars.
Mars Trek is a free, web-based application that provides high-quality, detailed visualizations of the planet using real data from 50 years of NASA exploration and allowing astronomers, citizen scientists and students to study the Red Planet’s features.
Experience Curiosity allows viewers to journey along with the one-ton rover on its Martian expeditions. The program simulates Mars in 3-D based on actual data from Curiosity and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), giving users first-hand experience in a day in the life of a Mars rover.
A NASA team already is using Mars Trek to aid in the selection of possible landing sites for the agency’s Mars 2020 rover, and the application will be used as part of NASA’s newly-announced process to examine and select candidate sites for the first human exploration mission to Mars in the 2030s.
“This tool has opened my eyes as to how we should first approach roaming on another world, and now the public can join in on the fun,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division in Washington. “Our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars. Together, humans and robots will pioneer Mars and the solar system."
Mars Trek has interactive maps, which include the ability to overlay a range of data sets generated from instruments aboard spacecraft orbiting Mars, and analysis tools for measuring surface features. Standard keyboard gaming controls are used to maneuver the users across Mars’ surface and 3-D printer-exportable topography allows users to print physical models of surface features.
Mars Trek was developed by NASA's Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project, which provides mission planners, lunar scientists and the public with analysis and data visualization tools for our moon. LMMP is managed by NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
Experience Curiosity also uses real science data to create a realistic and game-ready rover model based entirely on real mechanisms and executed commands. Users can manipulate the rover’s tools and view Mars through each of its cameras.
"We've done a lot of heavy 3-D processing to make Experience Curiosity work in a browser. Anybody with access to the web can take a journey to Mars," said Kevin Hussey, manager of the Visualization Applications and Development group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which manages and operates the Curiosity rover.
Curiosity's adventures on the Red Planet began in the early morning hours of Aug. 6, 2012, Eastern time (evening of Aug. 5, Pacific time), when a landing technique called the sky-crane maneuver deposited the rover in the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. From there, the rover began investigating its new home, discovering it had landed near an ancient lakebed sprinkled with organic material. Billions of years ago, fresh water would have flowed into this lake, offering conditions favorable for microbial life.
"At three years old, Curiosity already has had a rich and fascinating life. This new program lets the public experience some of the rover's adventures first-hand," said Jim Erickson, the project manager for the mission at JPL.
NASA has been on Mars for five decades with robotic explorers, and August traditionally has been a busy month for exploration of the planet. Viking 2 was put into orbit around Mars 39 years ago on Aug. 7, 1976, making NASA’s second successful landing on the Martian surface weeks later. MRO was launched on Aug. 12, 2005 and still is in operation orbiting Mars. And, Tuesday, Aug. 4 marked the eight-year anniversary of the launch of the Phoenix mission to the north polar region of the Red Planet.
Release15-163 NASA Notifies Congress About Space Station Contract Modification with Russia
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress Wednesday informing members that, due to their continued reductions in the president’s funding requests for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA was forced to extend its existing contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station. This contract modification is valued at about $490 million.
Release C15-026 NASA Awards U.S Global Change Research Program Support Services Contract
NASA has awarded a contract for technical and programmatic support services for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) National Coordination Office in Washington to ICF Incorporated, LLC of Fairfax, Virginia.
Established in 1989 by presidential initiative and mandated by Congress in 1990, USGCRP is a confederation of the research arms of 13 federal agencies, including NASA, which carry out research and develop and maintain capabilities that support the nation’s response to global change.
The cost-plus-fixed-fee contract includes a one-year base period along with four one-year option periods. The current potential value of the contract is approximately $30 million. The contract phase-in period begins Sept. 1 and has a performance period of five years beginning Oct. 1.
The contractor will provide technical, analytic and programmatic support services to USGCRP National Coordination Office. Major activities include core contract support for program coordination, facilitation and operational support; technical and operational expertise to support the end-to-end production of the National Climate Assessment and other domestic and international climate change assessments; technical and operational support for non-assessment strategic documents and technical reports; coordination and support of USGCRP planning and budget activities; communication and stakeholder outreach activities in support of USGCRP objectives; and technical support and development of USGCRP’s web presence, public online information resources, and office network and applications.
The work will be performed in office space provided by NASA in Washington.
Researchers Use 'Seafloor Gardens' to Switch on Light Bulb
One of the key necessities for life on our planet is electricity. That's not to say that life requires a plug and socket, but everything from shrubs to ants to people harnesses energy via the transfer of electrons -- the basis of electricity. Some experts think that the very first cell-like organisms on Earth channeled electricity from the seafloor using bubbling, chimney-shaped structures, also known as chemical gardens.
In a new study, researchers report growing their own tiny chimneys in a laboratory and using them to power a light bulb. The findings demonstrate that the underwater structures may have indeed given an electrical boost to Earth's very first life forms.
"These chimneys can act like electrical wires on the seafloor," said Laurie Barge of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, lead author of a new paper on the findings in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. "We're harnessing energy as the first life on Earth might have."
The findings are helping researchers put together the story of life on Earth, starting with the first chapter of its origins. How life first took root on our nascent planet is a topic riddled with many unanswered chemistry questions. One leading theory for the origins of life, called the alkaline vent hypothesis, is based on the idea that life sprang up underwater with the help of warm, alkaline (as opposed to acidic) chimneys.
Chimneys naturally form on the seafloor at hydrothermal vents. They range in size from inches to tens of feet (centimeters to tens of meters), and they are made of different types of minerals with, typically, a porous structure. On early Earth, these chimneys could have established electrical and proton gradients across the thin mineral membranes that separate their compartments. Such gradients emulate critical life processes that generate energy and organic compounds.
"Life doesn't want to get electrocuted, but needs just the right amount of electricity," said Michael Russell of JPL, a co-author of the study. "This new experiment confirms what that amount of electricity is -- just under a volt." Russell first proposed the alkaline vent hypothesis in 1989, and even predicted the existence of alkaline vent chimneys more than a decade before they were actually discovered in the Atlantic Ocean and dubbed "The Lost City."
Previously, researchers at the University of Tokyo and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology recorded electricity in "black smoker" vent chimneys in the Okinawa Trough in Japan. Black smokers are acidic -- and hotter and harsher -- than alkaline vents.
The new study demonstrates that laboratory chimneys similar to alkaline vents on early Earth had enough electricity to do something useful -- in this case power an LED (light-emitting diode) light bulb. The researchers connected four of the chemical gardens, submerged in iron-containing fluids, to turn on one light bulb. The process took months of patient laboratory work by Barge and Russell’s team, with the help of an undergraduate student intern at JPL, Yeghegis "Lily" Abedian.
"I remember when Lily told me the light bulb had turned on. It was shocking," said Barge (while admitting she likes a good pun).
The scientists hope to do the experiment again using different materials for their laboratory chimneys. In the current study, they made chimneys of iron sulfide and iron hydroxide, geological materials that can conduct electrons. Future experiments can assess the electrical potential of additional materials thought to have been present in Earth's early oceans and hydrothermal vents, such as molybdenum, nickel, hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
"With the right recipe, maybe one chimney alone will be able to light the LED – or instead, we could use that electrochemical energy to power other reactions," said Barge. "We can also start simulating higher temperature and pressures that occur at hydrothermal vents."
Materials or other energy sources thought to have been involved in the possible development of life on other planets and moons can be tested too, such as those on early Mars, or icy worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa.
The electrical needs of life's first organisms are only one of many puzzles. Other researchers are trying to figure out how organic materials, such as DNA, might have assembled from scratch. The ultimate goal is to fit all the pieces together into one amazing story of life's origins.
The JPL research team is part of the Icy Worlds team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. The Icy Worlds team is led by Isik Kanik of JPL.
JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena for NASA.
Release 15-166 NASA Names New Manager of International Space Station Program
NASA’s springboard for discovery, innovation and deep space exploration has a new chief. The agency has named Kirk Shireman as the new manager of its International Space Station (ISS) Program, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Shireman has served as deputy center director since 2013.
"Kirk brings considerable space station experience to this new leadership role. He will manage the overall development, integration and operation of the program,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington. “As program manager, Kirk will work directly with international partners to ensure safe and reliable operation of the orbiting laboratory, and foster continued scientific research that benefits humanity and helps prepare the agency for its journey to Mars.”
Shireman served as deputy ISS program manager from 2006 to 2013, just prior to stepping into the position of deputy center director. He also served as the chair of the ISS Mission Management Team after managing several of its subsystem offices, and managed multiple offices for NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M University in College Station and began his career with NASA in 1985.
NASA has recognized Shireman with the agency’s Exceptional Achievement Medal, Silver Snoopy award in 1990 and Presidential Rank Award in 2010. In 2013, the National Space Club awarded Shireman its Eagle Manned Mission Award for his outstanding leadership of the International Space Station.
Shireman succeeds Michael Suffredini, who is leaving the agency to take a position in private industry.
“During Mike’s tenure, the international project successfully completed construction and transitioned into a fully functional microgravity laboratory,” Gerstenmaier said. “Under his leadership, the station opened avenues for a new commercial marketplace in space and established a platform for groundbreaking research.”
Since Suffredini became program manager in 2005, the space station has evolved to become the jumping-off point for NASA's next giant leap in exploration, enabling research and technology developments that will benefit human and robotic exploration of destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including asteroids and Mars. To date, more than 1,700 research experiments have been conducted aboard the station, bringing together researchers from more than 80 countries in an effort to better the lives of all humanity.
Suffredini joined NASA in January 1989. He has a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
