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By NASA
More than 30,000 scientists gathered in Washington, D.C. during the second week of December – many to show off the work of NASA’s science volunteers! The American Geophysical Union held its annual meeting of professionals this month – the world’s largest gathering of Earth and Space Scientists. Here’s what they were talking about.
Eighteen NASA-sponsored project team members presented discoveries made with volunteers on topics from solar eclipses to global freshwater lake monitoring and exoplanet research. Overall, 175 posters and presentations featured the work of volunteers (up from 137 in 2023). Overall, 363 scientists and presenters at the conference described themselves as being involved in citizen science research (up from 201 in 2023). Two dozen scientists at the meeting gathered for lunch in the atrium of the National Portrait Gallery to talk about doing NASA science with volunteers. They discussed projects about asteroids, landslide hazard prediction, solar eclipse science, water quality, martian clouds, and more. Science done with volunteers is often called citizen science or participatory science – it does not require citizenship in any particular country. “Between the immense datasets being collected by NASA missions and the perennial need to open wide the doors to science so everyone can experience the joy and rewards of doing research together, citizen science is needed now more than ever!” said Sarah Kirn, the participatory science strategist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.” You can join one of NASA’s many participatory science projects right here!
Two dozen scientists gathered for lunch in the atrium of the National Portrait Gallery to talk about working with volunteers. They discussed projects about asteroids, landslide hazard prediction, solar eclipse science, water quality, martian clouds and more. Credit: Sarah Kirn Facebook logo @DoNASAScience @DoNASAScience Share
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Last Updated Dec 23, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured this image of Vesta as it left the giant asteroid’s orbit in 2012. The framing camera was looking down at the north pole, which is in the middle of the image.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Known as flow formations, these channels could be etched on bodies that would seem inhospitable to liquid because they are exposed to the extreme vacuum conditions of space.
Pocked with craters, the surfaces of many celestial bodies in our solar system provide clear evidence of a 4.6-billion-year battering by meteoroids and other space debris. But on some worlds, including the giant asteroid Vesta that NASA’s Dawn mission explored, the surfaces also contain deep channels, or gullies, whose origins are not fully understood.
A prime hypothesis holds that they formed from dry debris flows driven by geophysical processes, such as meteoroid impacts, and changes in temperature due to Sun exposure. A recent NASA-funded study, however, provides some evidence that impacts on Vesta may have triggered a less-obvious geologic process: sudden and brief flows of water that carved gullies and deposited fans of sediment. By using lab equipment to mimic conditions on Vesta, the study, which appeared in Planetary Science Journal, detailed for the first time what the liquid could be made of and how long it would flow before freezing.
Although the existence of frozen brine deposits on Vesta is unconfirmed, scientists have previously hypothesized that meteoroid impacts could have exposed and melted ice that lay under the surface of worlds like Vesta. In that scenario, flows resulting from this process could have etched gullies and other surface features that resemble those on Earth.
To explore potential explanations for deep channels, or gullies, seen on Vesta, scientists used JPL’s Dirty Under-vacuum Simulation Testbed for Icy Environments, or DUSTIE, to simulate conditions on the giant asteroid that would occur after meteoroids strike the surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech But how could airless worlds — celestial bodies without atmospheres and exposed to the intense vacuum of space — host liquids on the surface long enough for them to flow? Such a process would run contrary to the understanding that liquids quickly destabilize in a vacuum, changing to a gas when the pressure drops.
“Not only do impacts trigger a flow of liquid on the surface, the liquids are active long enough to create specific surface features,” said project leader and planetary scientist Jennifer Scully of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the experiments were conducted. “But for how long? Most liquids become unstable quickly on these airless bodies, where the vacuum of space is unyielding.”
The critical component turns out to be sodium chloride — table salt. The experiments found that in conditions like those on Vesta, pure water froze almost instantly, while briny liquids stayed fluid for at least an hour. “That’s long enough to form the flow-associated features identified on Vesta, which were estimated to require up to a half-hour,” said lead author Michael J. Poston of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
Launched in 2007, the Dawn spacecraft traveled to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to orbit Vesta for 14 months and Ceres for almost four years. Before ending in 2018, the mission uncovered evidence that Ceres had been home to a subsurface reservoir of brine and may still be transferring brines from its interior to the surface. The recent research offers insights into processes on Ceres but focuses on Vesta, where ice and salts may produce briny liquid when heated by an impact, scientists said.
Re-creating Vesta
To re-create Vesta-like conditions that would occur after a meteoroid impact, the scientists relied on a test chamber at JPL called the Dirty Under-vacuum Simulation Testbed for Icy Environments, or DUSTIE. By rapidly reducing the air pressure surrounding samples of liquid, they mimicked the environment around fluid that comes to the surface. Exposed to vacuum conditions, pure water froze instantly. But salty fluids hung around longer, continuing to flow before freezing.
The brines they experimented with were a little over an inch (a few centimeters) deep; scientists concluded the flows on Vesta that are yards to tens of yards deep would take even longer to refreeze.
The researchers were also able to re-create the “lids” of frozen material thought to form on brines. Essentially a frozen top layer, the lids stabilize the liquid beneath them, protecting it from being exposed to the vacuum of space — or, in this case the vacuum of the DUSTIE chamber — and helping the liquid flow longer before freezing again.
This phenomenon is similar to how on Earth lava flows farther in lava tubes than when exposed to cool surface temperatures. It also matches up with modeling research conducted around potential mud volcanoes on Mars and volcanoes that may have spewed icy material from volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
“Our results contribute to a growing body of work that uses lab experiments to understand how long liquids last on a variety of worlds,” Scully said.
Find more information about NASA’s Dawn mission here:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dawn/
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Gretchen McCartney
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
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Last Updated Dec 20, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Data from the SWOT satellite was used to calculate average water levels for lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin from July 2023 to November 2024. Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters) above sea level; dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters). Data from the U.S.-European Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission gives researchers a detailed look at lakes and reservoirs in a U.S. watershed.
The Ohio River Basin stretches from Pennsylvania to Illinois and contains a system of reservoirs, lakes, and rivers that drains an area almost as large as France. Researchers with the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission, a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), now have a new tool for measuring water levels not only in this area, which is home to more than 25 million people, but in other watersheds around the world as well.
Since early 2023, SWOT has been measuring the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface — including oceans, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers — covering nearly the entire globe at least once every 21 days. The SWOT satellite also measures the horizontal extent of water in freshwater bodies. Earlier this year, the mission started making validated data publicly available.
“Having these two perspectives — water extent and levels — at the same time, along with detailed, frequent coverage over large areas, is unprecedented,” said Jida Wang, a hydrologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a member of the SWOT science team. “This is a groundbreaking, exciting aspect of SWOT.”
Researchers can use the mission’s data on water level and extent to calculate how the amount of water stored in a lake or reservoir changes over time. This, in turn, can give hydrologists a more precise picture of river discharge — how much water moves through a particular stretch of river.
The visualization above uses SWOT data from July 2023 to November 2024 to show the average water level above sea level in lakes and reservoirs in the Ohio River Basin, which drains into the Mississippi River. Yellow indicates values greater than 1,600 feet (500 meters), and dark purple represents water levels less than 330 feet (100 meters). Comparing how such levels change can help hydrologists measure water availability over time in a local area or across a watershed.
Complementing a Patchwork of Data
Historically, estimating freshwater availability for communities within a river basin has been challenging. Researchers gather information from gauges installed at certain lakes and reservoirs, from airborne surveys, and from other satellites that look at either water level or extent. But for ground-based and airborne instruments, the coverage can be limited in space and time. Hydrologists can piece together some of what they need from different satellites, but the data may or may not have been taken at the same time, or the researchers might still need to augment the information with measurements from ground-based sensors.
Even then, calculating freshwater availability can be complicated. Much of the work relies on computer models. “Traditional water models often don’t work very well in highly regulated basins like the Ohio because they have trouble representing the unpredictable behavior of dam operations,” said George Allen, a freshwater researcher at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and a member of the SWOT science team.
Many river basins in the United States include dams and reservoirs managed by a patchwork of entities. While the people who manage a reservoir may know how their section of water behaves, planning for water availability down the entire length of a river can be a challenge. Since SWOT looks at both rivers and lakes, its data can help provide a more unified view.
“The data lets water managers really know what other people in these freshwater systems are doing,” said SWOT science team member Colin Gleason, a hydrologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
While SWOT researchers are excited about the possibilities that the data is opening up, there is still much to be done. The satellite’s high-resolution view of water levels and extent means there is a vast ocean of data that researchers must wade through, and it will take some time to process and analyze the measurements.
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov
News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Last Updated Dec 17, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
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Sols 4393-4395: Weekend Work at the Base of Texoli Butte
Caption: NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on Dec. 12, 2024, at 23:15:47 UTC — sol 4391, or Martian day 4,391, of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Dec. 13, 2024
Curiosity continues to make great progress over the Mount Sharp bedrock and will spend the weekend investigating the northern base of the “Texoli” butte. The science team back on Earth enjoyed taking in the beautiful views of nearby “Wilkerson” butte and “Gould Mesa” while digging into the workspace in front of us to create a hefty to-do list for our roving geologist on Mars.
The rocks at the rover’s wheels today consisted of dusty, pale-colored bedrock that had a range of textures. We used the dust removal tool (DRT), MAHLI, and APXS instruments to characterize lighter, smooth bedrock at “Calabasas Peak,” and slightly darker, rougher bedrock at “Triunfo Canyon.” The ChemCam team used the Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to analyze the composition of the rougher bedrock at “Chilao” and a vein that cuts through the bedrock at “Ojai,” and Mastcam provided the supporting documentation images of each target.
The Mastcam team assembled a variety of images and mosaics in the workspace and beyond. Two stereo mosaics documented the network of fractures in the bedrock at “Fern Dell” while a stereo mosaic of “Amir’s Garden” will be used to observe possible deformation in the rocks. A few single-frame images of troughs in the workspace will be used to investigate active surface processes. Further in the distance, Mastcam created a stereo mosaic of “Jawbone Canyon” to image potential aeolian ripples, and supported a ChemCam long-distance RMI image of a crater in the drive direction called “Grant Lake.” Lastly, ChemCam planned a long-distance RMI image to get a closer look at the structures within Gould Mesa.
Curiosity will drive 44 meters (about 144 feet) to the west over the weekend as we continue to close in on the intriguing boxwork structures. Lastly, the environmental group rounded out the plan with activities including cloud observations, dust-devil monitoring, and surveys of the amount of dust in the atmosphere.
Written by: Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
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Last Updated Dec 16, 2024 Related Terms
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Sols 4382-4383: Team Work, Dream Work
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Right Navigation Camera on sol 4373 — Martian day 4,373 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — on Nov. 24, 2024, at 08:32:59 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, Dec. 2, 2024
Today, after a weeklong holiday break, the team was eager to take a look at Curiosity’s new workspace. After driving 51 meters (about 167 feet) alongside Texoli butte (pictured) we had a whole host of new rocks to examine, and it was one of those curiously perfect planning days where everything falls into place. Our team of geologists here on Earth was busy studying the images our Martian geologist had downlinked to Earth prior to planning, and we scheduled 1.5 hours of science activities on the first sol of this plan. An interesting and varied workspace today saw lots of instruments working together to study the rocks in-depth — teamwork really does make the dream work.
To begin, we are targeting a vertical rock face called “Coronet Lake” near the rover. Coronet Lake has a cluster of nodules on show and we are getting information on the composition of these nodules with APXS and a ChemCam LIBS, as well as a close-up image with our MAHLI instrument. We also have a second MAHLI activity scheduled on a flat rock called “Excelsior Mountain.” Our observant team spotted an interesting-looking rock named “Admiration Point.” This rock may have fallen from the nearby Texoli butte, or could be a meteorite. To test these hypotheses further, we are targeting Admiration Point with a Mastcam mosaic and a ChemCam passive. ChemCam and Mastcam work together again on a target named “Olancha,” an area of rocks that could contain evidence of deformation from when the rocks first formed. Olancha will be targeted with a ChemCam long-distance RMI and a Mastcam mosaic.
Mastcam is finishing off the geological observations here with mosaics of “Angels Camp,” a rock containing veins where water may have once flowed, “Bare Island Lake,” a gray rock containing interesting polygonal ridges, and a trough feature close to Coronet Lake. ChemCam is taking another look back at Gediz Vallis channel to see a transition between light- and dark-toned rocks with a long-distance RMI, and we are rounding off this plan with our standard environmental observations.
As the Geology and Mineralogy theme group Keeper of the Plan for today’s planning, I made sure that this sol was packed full of science activities that the team wanted to schedule. After this busy first sol, Curiosity will be driving about 50 meters (about 164 feet), continuing to make our way out of Gediz Vallis, and we are all very excited to see what the rest of the sulfate-bearing unit has to offer us.
Written by Emma Harris, graduate student at Natural History Museum, London
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Last Updated Dec 03, 2024 Related Terms
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