Jun 7 2012

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 12-184 NASA DISCOVERS UNPRECEDENTED BLOOMS OF OCEAN PLANT LIFE

WASHINGTON -- Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth. The finding reveals a new consequence of the Arctic's warming climate and provides an important clue to understanding the impacts of a changing climate and environment on the Arctic Ocean and its ecology. The discovery was made during a NASA oceanographic expedition in the summers of 2010 and 2011. The expedition called ICESCAPE, or Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment, explored Arctic waters in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas along Alaska's western and northern coasts onboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. Using optical technologies, scientists looked at the impacts of environmental variability and change in the Arctic on the ocean biology, ecology and biogeochemistry. "Part of NASA's mission is pioneering scientific discovery, and this is like finding the Amazon rainforest in the middle of the Mojave Desert," said Paula Bontempi, NASA's ocean biology and biogeochemistry program manager in Washington. "We embarked on ICESCAPE to validate our satellite ocean-observing data in an area of the Earth that is very difficult to get to," Bontempi said. "We wound up making a discovery that hopefully will help researchers and resource managers better understand the Arctic." The microscopic plants, called phytoplankton, are the base of the marine food chain. Phytoplankton were thought to grow in the Arctic Ocean only after sea ice had retreated for the summer. Scientists now think that the thinning Arctic ice is allowing sunlight to reach the waters under the sea ice, catalyzing the plant blooms where they had never been observed. The findings were published today in the journal Science. "If someone had asked me before the expedition whether we would see under-ice blooms, I would have told them it was impossible," said Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., leader of the ICESCAPE mission and lead author of the new study. "This discovery was a complete surprise." During the July 2011 Chukchi Sea leg of ICESCAPE, the researchers observed blooms beneath the ice that extended from the sea-ice edge to 72 miles into the ice pack. Ocean current data revealed that these blooms developed under the ice and had not drifted there from open water, where phytoplankton concentrations can be high. The phytoplankton were extremely active, doubling in number more than once a day. Blooms in open waters grow at a much slower rate, doubling in two to three days. These growth rates are among the highest ever measured for polar waters. Researchers estimate that phytoplankton production under the ice in parts of the Arctic could be up to 10 times higher than in the nearby open ocean. Fast-growing phytoplankton consume large amounts of carbon dioxide. The study concludes that scientists will have to reassess the amount of carbon dioxide entering the Arctic Ocean through biological activity if the under-ice blooms turn out to be common. "At this point we don't know whether these rich phytoplankton blooms have been happening in the Arctic for a long time and we just haven't observed them before," Arrigo said. "These blooms could become more widespread in the future, however, if the Arctic sea ice cover continues to thin." Previously, researchers thought the Arctic Ocean sea ice blocked most sunlight needed for phytoplankton growth. But in recent decades younger and thinner ice has replaced much of the Arctic's older and thicker ice. This young ice is almost flat and the ponds that form when snow cover melts in the summer spread much wider than those on rugged older ice. These extensive but shallow melt ponds act as windows to the ocean, letting large amounts of sunlight pass through the ice to reach the water below, said Donald Perovich, a geophysicist with the U.S. Army Cold Regions and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., who studied the optical properties of the ice during the ICESCAPE expedition. "When we looked under the ice, it was like a photographic negative. Beneath the bare-ice areas that reflect a lot of sunlight, it was dark. Under the melt ponds, it was very bright," Perovich said. He is currently visiting professor at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering. The discovery of these previously unknown under-ice blooms also has implications for the broader Arctic ecosystem, including migratory species such as whales and birds. Phytoplankton are eaten by small ocean animals, which are eaten by larger fish and ocean animals. A change in the timeline of the blooms can cause disruptions for larger animals that feed either on phytoplankton or on the creatures that eat these microorganisms. "It could make it harder and harder for migratory species to time their life cycles to be in the Arctic when the bloom is at its peak," Arrigo said. "If their food supply is coming earlier, they might be missing the boat." Bontempi believes the discovery also may have major implications for the global carbon cycle and the ocean's energy balance. "The discovery certainly indicates we need to revise our understanding of the ecology of the Arctic and the region's role in the Earth system," Bontempi said.

RELEASE: 12-185 NASA'S SPITZER FINDS FIRST OBJECTS BURNED FURIOUSLY

WASHINGTON -- The faint, lumpy glow from the very first objects in the universe may have been detected with the best precision yet using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The objects could be wildly massive stars or voracious black holes. They are too far away to be seen individually, but Spitzer has captured new, convincing evidence of what appears to be the collective pattern of their infrared light. The observations help confirm the first objects were numerous in quantity and furiously burned cosmic fuel. "These objects would have been tremendously bright," said Alexander "Sasha" Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lead author of a new paper appearing in The Astrophysical Journal. "We can't yet directly rule out mysterious sources for this light that could be coming from our nearby universe, but it is now becoming increasingly likely that we are catching a glimpse of an ancient epoch. Spitzer is laying down a roadmap for NASA's upcoming James Webb Telescope, which will tell us exactly what and where these first objects were." Spitzer first caught hints of this remote pattern of light, known as the cosmic infrared background, in 2005, and again with more precision in 2007. Now, Spitzer is in the extended phase of its mission, during which it performs more in-depth studies on specific patches of the sky. Kashlinsky and his colleagues used Spitzer to look at two patches of sky for more than 400 hours each. The team then carefully subtracted all of the known stars and galaxies in the images. Rather than being left with a black, empty patch of sky, they found faint patterns of light with several telltale characteristics of the cosmic infrared background. The lumps in the pattern observed are consistent with the way the very distant objects are thought to be clustered together. Kashlinsky likens the observations to looking for Fourth of July fireworks in New York City from Los Angeles. First, you would have to remove all the foreground lights between the two cities, as well as the blazing lights of New York City itself. You ultimately would be left with a fuzzy map of how the fireworks are distributed, but they would still be too distant to make out individually. "We can gather clues from the light of the universe's first fireworks," said Kashlinsky. "This is teaching us that the sources, or the "sparks," are intensely burning their nuclear fuel." The universe formed roughly 13.7 billion years ago in a fiery, explosive Big Bang. With time, it cooled and, by around 500 million years later, the first stars, galaxies and black holes began to take shape. Astronomers say some of that "first light" may have traveled billions of years to reach the Spitzer Space Telescope. The light would have originated at visible or even ultraviolet wavelengths and then, because of the expansion of the universe, stretched out to the longer, infrared wavelengths observed by Spitzer. The new study improves on previous observations by measuring this cosmic infrared background out to scales equivalent to two full moons -- significantly larger than what was detected before. Imagine trying to find a pattern in the noise in an old-fashioned television set by looking at just a small piece of the screen. It would be hard to know for certain if a suspected pattern was real. By observing a larger section of the screen, you would be able to resolve both small- and large-scale patterns, further confirming your initial suspicion. Likewise, astronomers using Spitzer have increased the amount of the sky examined to obtain more definitive evidence of the cosmic infrared background. The researchers plan to explore more patches of sky in the future to gather more clues hidden in the light of this ancient era. "This is one of the reason's we are building the James Webb Space Telescope," said Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Spitzer is giving us tantalizing clues, but James Webb will tell us what really lies at the era where stars first ignited." Other authors are Richard Arendt of Goddard and the University of Maryland in Baltimore; Matt Ashby and Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.; and John Mather and Harvey Moseley of Goddard. Fazio led the initial observations of these sky fields. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

RELEASE: 12-188 NASA ANNOUNCES 2012 SUMMER OF INNOVATION MINI-GRANTS OPPORTUNITY

WASHINGTON -- NASA is accepting proposals until June 29 for the mini-grants component of the agency's 2012 Summer of Innovation (SoI) project. Proposals may be submitted through the National Space Grant Foundation for NASA-themed content in a variety of programs geared toward middle school students. The foundation is administering the grant program for NASA. Mini-grants are designed to engage a wide variety of education partners -- such as museums, schools or school districts, and youth organizations -- to infuse science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) content in existing summer and after-school student programs. The maximum award value for each 2012 mini-grant is $2,500. "This is an outstanding opportunity for a diverse group of organizations to work with NASA and share STEM learning through summer and after-school activities," said Leland Melvin, associate administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Even non-traditional providers like church groups and Girl Scout troops can join the NASA team and help us fuel students' curiosity about exploration." In 2011, 180 mini-grants were awarded in 46 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to organizations including museums, non-profit organizations, public schools and youth organizations. This year, NASA anticipates making approximately 200 awards.

MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-108 NASA HOSTS TELECONFERENCE ABOUT ROVER EN ROUTE TO MARS LANDING

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at noon EDT, June 11, to provide a status update on the Aug. 5, 2012, landing of the most advanced rover ever to be sent to Mars. NASA's Curiosity rover, carried by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft, will land near the Martian equator at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT, Aug. 5, (1:31 a.m. EDT, Aug. 6). Panelists include: -- Dave Lavery, MSL program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington -- Michael Meyer, lead scientist, Mars Exploration Program, NASA Headquarters -- Pete Theisinger, MSL project manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. -- John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.