NASA-Funded Carbon Dioxide Map of U.S. Released on Google Earth

Interactive maps that detail carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are now available on the popular Google Earth platform. The maps, funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy through the joint North American Carbon Program, can display fossil fuel emissions by the hour, geographic region, and fuel type.

A science team led by researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., integrated seven primary data sets, including imagery of Earth’s surface captured by the NASA-built Landsat 5 satellite, fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy, and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Researchers from the project, named "Vulcan" for the Roman god of fire, constructed an unprecedented inventory of the carbon dioxide that results from the burning of 48 different types of fossil fuel. The data-based maps show estimates of the hourly carbon dioxide outputs of factories, power plants, vehicle traffic and residential and commercial areas.

First released to the scientific community in April 2007, the emissions data have now been integrated into an image-based format that has become a standard online viewing tool for content that spans broad geographic areas.

"The release of the Vulcan inventory on Google Earth brings this information into the living room of anyone with an Internet connection," said Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue and leader of the Vulcan Project. "From a societal perspective, Vulcan provides a description of where and when society influences climate change through fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions."

"Users can see their county or state in relation to others, and see what aspects of economic activity are driving fossil-fuel emissions," Gurney added. "Vulcan could help demystify climate change and empower people in the same way as seeing the miles-per-gallon number on the dashboard of a hybrid car."

The new Vulcan maps assimilate fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions data that was previously available from disparate sources and in different formats into one comprehensive data product. The fine level of detail offers more accuracy for estimating the fossil fuel contribution to the global carbon budget, the balance of carbon absorbed by Earth and released into the atmosphere. The Vulcan data product provides new scientific opportunities to assess the relationship between fossil fuel emissions and climate in the atmosphere and to see what future variability and extremes may bring.

"One of the goals of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program is to assist with scientifically based formulation of policy and decision making," said Peter Griffith, director of the Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and coordinator of the North American Carbon Program. "By allowing non-specialists to see changes in carbon dioxide emissions in time and across broad areas, we’re helping them to understand critical information for climate change policy decisions."

Vulcan Project data and maps will complement observations from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder on NASA's Aqua spacecraft and the upcoming Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which is set to launch next week. This mission will use space-based instruments to precisely make the first global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the accuracy and geographic coverage required to improve estimates of the sources and sinks of the greenhouse gas.

Gurney and colleagues now have a second phase of NASA-funded work underway to create similar inventories of carbon dioxide emissions for Canada and Mexico.

NASA's Kepler Mission to Seek Other Earths

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - NASA's Kepler spacecraft is now at the launch pad and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 10:48 p.m. EST. It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth - rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

"Kepler is a critical component in NASA's broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present," said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars."

The mission will spend three and a half years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. It is expected to find hundreds of planets the size of Earth and larger at various distances from their stars. If Earth-size planets are common in the habitable zone, Kepler could find dozens; if those planets are rare, Kepler might find none.

In the end, the mission will be our first step toward answering a question posed by the ancient Greeks: are there other worlds like ours or are we alone?

"Finding that most stars have Earths implies that the conditions that support the development of life could be common throughout our galaxy," said William Borucki, Kepler's science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "Finding few or no Earths indicates that we might be alone."

The Kepler telescope is specially designed to detect the periodic dimming of stars that planets cause as they pass by. Some star systems are oriented in such a way that their planets cross in front of their stars, as seen from our Earthly point of view. As the planets pass by, they cause their stars' light to slightly dim, or wink.

The telescope can detect even the faintest of these winks, registering changes in brightness of only 20 parts per million. To achieve this resolution, Kepler will use the largest camera ever launched into space, a 95-megapixel array of charged couple devices, known as CCDs.

"If Kepler were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front," said James Fanson, Kepler project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

By staring at one large patch of sky for the duration of its lifetime, Kepler will be able to watch planets periodically transit their stars over multiple cycles. This will allow astronomers to confirm the presence of planets. Earth-size planets in habitable zones would theoretically take about a year to complete one orbit, so Kepler will monitor those stars for at least three years to confirm their presence. Ground-based telescopes and NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes will perform follow-up studies on the larger planets.

"Kepler is a critical cornerstone in understanding what types of planets are formed around other stars," said exoplanet hunter Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University. "The discoveries that emerge will be used immediately to study the atmospheres of large, gas exoplanets with Spitzer. And the statistics that are compiled will help us chart a course toward one day imaging a pale blue dot like our planet, orbiting another star in our galaxy."

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. Ames is the home organization of the science principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

NASA and Google Launch Virtual Exploration of Mars

Imagine traveling the surface of the Red Planet, observing millennia-old canyons or viewing Martian dust devils first hand. Now, you can with the advent of a new Mars mode in Google Earth that brings to everyone's desktop a high-resolution, three-dimensional view of the Mars.

Besides providing a three-dimensional view of Mars that will aid public understanding of Mars science, the new mode, Google Mars 3D, also gives researchers a platform for sharing data similar to what Google Earth provides for Earth scientists.

The mode enables users to fly virtually through enormous canyons and scale huge mountains on Mars, higher than any found on Earth.

Users also can explore the Red Planet through the eyes of the Mars rovers and other Mars missions, providing a unique perspective of the entire planet.

Users can see some of the latest satellite imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other probes orbiting the Red Planet, as well as learn about new discoveries and explore indexes of available Mars imagery. The new Mars mode also allows users to add their own 3-D content to the Mars map to share with the world.

NASA Seeks Technologies For Testing During Reduced Gravity Flights

WASHINGTON -- NASA is looking for new technologies that have potential use in future agency projects which could benefit from testing during flights on an airplane that simulates the weightless conditions of space. The technologies may improve air and space vehicle capabilities and support future systems used in space exploration.

NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training, or FAST, program helps emerging technologies mature through testing in a reduced gravity environment. To prepare technologies for space applications, it is important to demonstrate they work in a zero-gravity environment. This unique testing environment can be provided in an aircraft flying repeated parabolic trajectories which create brief periods of zero gravity. The aircraft also can simulate reduced-gravity levels similar to those found on the surface of the moon or Mars.

The testing opportunities are being offered to U.S. companies, individuals, academic or research institutions, or government agencies. Through a partnership agreement, NASA will provide free flight time for the tests while project teams will be responsible for all other expenses. Proposals are due by March 20. Flights to demonstrate the technologies will be conducted in August 2009 from Ellington Field in Houston. NASA expects to select at least 20 projects for this round of test flights, pending availability of funding.

Initial reduced-gravity tests with small businesses developing technologies for NASA were conducted in September 2008. Those tests validated the FAST concept and paved the way for this broader opportunity for all U.S. organizations developing technology NASA may need. In the future, the FAST program expects to provide more extensive technology testing opportunities, with suborbital flights as well as orbital flights, when such commercial services become available.

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington manages the FAST program. The Reduced Gravity Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston is providing test management for the flights. NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is providing technical assistance to the FAST program.

For more information about FAST, visit:

http://ipp.nasa.gov/ii_fast.htm

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

NASA and Google Launch Virtual Exploration of Mars

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA and Google announced Monday the release of a new Mars mode in Google Earth that brings to everyone's desktop a high-resolution, three-dimensional view of the Red Planet.

Besides providing a rich, immersive 3D view of Mars that will aid public understanding of Mars science, the new mode, Google Mars 3D, also gives researchers a platform for sharing data similar to what Google Earth provides for Earth scientists.

The mode enables users to fly virtually through enormous canyons and scale huge mountains on Mars that are much larger than any found on Earth. Users also can explore the Red Planet through the eyes of the Mars rovers and other Mars missions, providing a unique perspective of the entire planet.

Users can see some of the latest satellite imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other probes orbiting the Red Planet. Viewers can learn about new discoveries and explore indexes of available Mars imagery. The new Mars mode also allows users to add their own 3D content to the Mars map to share with the world.

Today's announcement is the latest benefit from a Space Act Agreement NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., signed with Google in November 2006. Under its terms, NASA and Google agreed to collaborate to make NASA's data sets available to the world.

NASA Ames, along with its partners at Google, Carnegie Mellon University, SETI, and other institutions, helped produce the data to make this possible.

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Google is headquartered close to Ames in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

For more information about Google, visit:

http://www.google.com

Astronomers Observe Planet With Wild Temperature Swings

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has observed a planet that heats up to red-hot temperatures in a matter of hours before quickly cooling back down.

The "hot-headed" planet is HD 80606b, a gas giant that orbits a star 190 light-years from Earth. It was already known to be quite unusual, with an orbit shuttling it nearly as far out as Earth is from our sun, and much closer in than our planet Mercury. Astronomers used Spitzer, an infrared observatory, to measure heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit).

"We watched the development of one of the fiercest storms in the galaxy," said astronomer Greg Laughlin of the Lick Observatory, University of California at Santa Cruz. "This is the first time that we've detected weather changes in real time on a planet outside our solar system." Laughlin is lead author of a new report about the discovery appearing in the Jan. 29 issue of Nature.

HD 80606b was originally discovered in 2001 by a Swiss planet-hunting team led by Dominique Naef of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. Using a method known as the Doppler-velocity technique, the astronomers learned that the planet is wildly eccentric, with an orbit more like a comet's than a planet's. HD 80606b's orbit takes it as far out as 0.85 astronomical units from its star, and as close in as 0.03 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the sun).

The planet takes about 111 days to circle its star, but it spends most of its time at farther distances while zipping through the closest part of its orbit in less than a day. (This is a consequence of Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion, which states that orbiting bodies -- planets and comets -- sweep out an equal area in equal time.)

"If you could float above the clouds of this planet, you'd see its sun growing larger and larger at faster and faster rates, increasing in brightness by almost a factor of 1,000," said Laughlin.

Spitzer observed HD 80606b before, during and just after its closest passage to the star in November of 2007, as the planet sizzled under the star's heat. When Laughlin and his colleagues planned the observation, they did not know whether the planet would disappear completely behind the star, an event called a secondary eclipse, or whether it would remain in view. Luckily for the team, the planet did indeed temporarily disappear from view, providing the planet's initial and final temperatures (had the planet had not been eclipsed, the team would have known only the temperature change without knowing the starting point).

The extreme temperature swing observed by Spitzer indicates that the air near the planet's gaseous surface must quickly absorb and lose heat. This type of atmospheric information revealing how a planet responds to sudden changes in heating -- an extreme version of seasonal change -- had never been obtained before for any exoplanet (a planet orbiting another star).

"By studying this planet under such extreme circumstances, we figure out how it handles heat -- does it retain it or dissipate it? In this case, the answer is that the planet releases the heat right away," said Laughlin. "We were essentially able to perform the 'thought experiment' -- what would happen to a planet like Jupiter if we could drag it very close to the sun?"

Laughlin and his colleagues say that a key factor in being able to make the observations is the planet's eccentric orbit. Unlike so-called hot Jupiter planets that remain in tight orbits around their stars, HD 80606b rotates around its axis roughly every 34 hours. Hot Jupiters, on the other hand, are thought to be tidally locked like our moon, so one side always faces their stars. Because HD 80606b spins on its axis many times per orbit, the astronomers were able to measure how its atmosphere responds to being baked by the star.

"The planet is spinning at a fast enough rate for the planet's hot spot to come into view," said co-author Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The hot spot can't hide."

Amateur and professional astronomers alike are gearing up to observe HD 80606b this coming Valentine's Day, when it will swing around the front of its star. There's a 15 percent chance that the planet will eclipse its star, an event known as the primary transit. If so, the event would not only be remarkable to see, but would also provide more details about the nature of this temperamental world.

Other authors include Jonathan Langton, Daniel Kasen, Steve Vogt, Eugenio Rivera and Stefano Meschiari from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Washington. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about Spitzer is at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer. More information about extrasolar planets is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov

62 Years at NASA and Still Going Strong

Sixty-two years ago today, Jack Boyd, senior advisor to the Ames director, first reported to work at Moffett Field, the home of NASA's Ames Research Center.

To get there, Boyd traveled on a transcontinental train from Virginia to the San Francisco Bay Area. While most of his classmates at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University chose to work close to home at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Boyd struck out on his own, and trailblazed his way to Ames.

"You'd have to be crazy not to be excited about space exploration," Boyd said about what motivates him to come into work every morning. "It's always fun. I'm continually amazed to think I've been with NASA for 62 years."

He first reported to work at the Personnel Office on Jan. 15, 1947, where after looking over his mechanical engineering degree with an aeronautics option, they decided to assign him to the Fluid Dynamics Division. "They walked me over to the1-foot-by-3-foot wind tunnel, introduced me to my colleagues and said, 'get to work!'" Boyd remembered. At 21 years old, Boyd was earning a respectable $2,644 a year, at a time when Walter Vincenti, his branch chief, and Harvey Allen, his division chief, were conducting cutting-edge, high-speed research in the Ames 1-foot-by-3-foot and 6-foot-by-6-foot wind tunnels on swept wings, conical camber, canards on supersonic aircraft, flights through non-Earth atmospheres and the shape of future space capsules.

In 1963, Harvey Allen nominated Boyd to corral all the new research at Ames into comprehensive programs. In the late 1960s, as America was redefining its space exploration mission and sending humans to the moon, Boyd served as the Ames’ lead to assist NASA Headquarters in Washington in creating new NASA research programs.

"Since the moon landing nearly 40 years ago, I think NASA's most remarkable achievement has been the robotic exploration of Mars, starting with the Viking spacecraft in 1976 to the Mars Exploration Rovers and Phoenix," Boyd said, when reflecting on NASA's many accomplishments.

Boyd worked as deputy director for Aeronautical and Flight Systems at Ames; deputy director of NASA's Dryden Research Center in Edwards, Calif.; acting deputy director and associate director of Ames, and then associate administrator for management at NASA Headquarters. He helped consolidate NASA’s helicopter research program, prepared Dryden for its role as a space shuttle landing site; implemented affirmative action programs for NASA; completed NASA’s advanced secure computing facility; worked with defense agencies on classified research, and led NASA to implement the reorganization and reforms of the Packard report about federal laboratories. Additionally, Boyd served as chancellor for research and was an adjunct professor of aerodynamics, engineering and the history of spaceflight for the University of Texas System.

In his 'second career' at Ames, Boyd supported educational outreach. Even when he became the executive assistant to the director, his primary role was that of advisor, teacher and mentor. Today, in addition to being the senior advisor to the Ames director, he also serves as the senior advisor for history and as the center ombudsman. In April last year, Boyd received the 2008 NASA Headquar¬ters History Division Award for his energetic outreach and promo¬tion of NASA history and for making history relevant to NASA’s present and future.

"I'm most proud of my work helping and mentoring the new engineers as they came to work at NASA," Jack said.

Looking ahead, Boyd says he is excited for the upcoming launch of the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, mission to look for water ice on the moon, and the Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system; the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, airborne laboratory which will help scientists study the universe using infrared astronomy; and all of NASA's continued efforts in aeronautics and exploration of our solar system.

Boyd's advice to anyone just starting out?

"Try to make as many acquaintances as possible to learn what's going on around NASA, and learn to deal with people," he advised with a smile.

For more information

http://www.nasa.gov