NASA Voyage to Explore Sea Saltiness and Climate Pg 4
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National Aeronautics and Space Administration Volume 8 Issue 8 September 2012 NASA Voyage to Explore Sea Saltiness and Climate Pg 4 Inspiration from a Roll of Tape Pg 8 Next Mars Mission Enters Final Phase Before Launch Pg 9 www.nasa.gov Goddard Updates The Weekly - 2 September 11 Damage Visible from Space - 3 NASA Voyage to Explore Sea Saltiness and Climate - 4 Global Hawk Mission Begins with Hurricane Leslie - 6 Inspiration from a Roll of Tape - 8 Next Mars Mission Enters Final Phase Before Launch - 9 Summer Students Cherish Goddard Experience - 10 2012 Robert H. Goddard Honor Awards Nominations for the 2012 Robert H. Goddard Honor Awards may be submitted from September 1-Octo- Goddard Community ber 15. Specific information and details are included Outside Goddard in the 2012 July-December Awards Call book. Contact Khrista White at x6-9059 or MJ Jackson at Bob Savage - 12 SEPTEMBER 11 DAMAGE VISIBLE x6-4574 for questions or assistance. Service for Armstrong at National Cathedral FROM SPACE NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other Cover caption: University of Washington Applied dignitaries will attend a public memorial service Physics Laboratory Senior Principal Oceanogra- isible from space, a smoke plume rises from the Manhattan He described the situation to me as best he knew it at ~0900 CDT. at the National Cathedral to honor Neil Arm- pher Jason Gobat work one of their instruments area after two planes crashed into the towers of the World I was flabbergasted, then horrified. My first thought was that this strong on September 13. The ceremony will be onboard the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institu- VTrade Center. The above photo was taken of metropolitan wasn’t a real conversation that I was still listening to one of my broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed New York City (and other parts of New York as well as New Jersey) Tom Clancy tapes. It just didn’t seem possible on this scale in our tion’s research vessel Knorr in Woods Hole, Mass. online by NASA. For more information, click on the morning of September 11, 2001. “Our prayers and thoughts country. I couldn’t even imagine the particulars, even before the the picture of Neil Armstrong. go out to all the people there, and everywhere else,” said Station news of further destruction began coming in. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Commander Frank Culbertson of Expedition 3, after the terrorists’ attacks. I glanced at the World Map on the computer to see where over the SDO Enters Semiannual Eclipse Season world we were and noticed that we were coming southeast out of Twice a year, SDO moves into its eclipse Info The following day, he posted a public letter that captured his initial Canada and would be passing over New England in a few minutes. season, a time when Earth blocks its view thoughts of the events as they unfolded. “The world changed to- I zipped around the station until I found a window that would give of the sun for a period of time each day. Goddard View is an official publication of NASA’s Goddard day. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of me a view of NYC and grabbed the nearest camera. It happened to Spacecraft observing the sun from an Space Flight Center. Goddard View showcases people and what happened to our country today when it was attacked.” be a video camera, and I was looking south from the window of orbit around Earth has to contend with achievements in the Goddard community that support Michael’s cabin. such eclipses, but SDO’s orbit is designed Goddard’s mission to explore, discover, and understand our Upon further reflection, Culbertson said, “It’s horrible to see to minimize them as much as possible. To dynamic universe. Goddard View is published weekly by the smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the watch the video of Earth moving across Office of Communications. fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the sun, click on the image of the sun. dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at Managing Editor: Trusilla Steele destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second Editor: John M. Putman Mission to Study Magnetic Explosions matter who you are.” tower. How horrible…” Passes Major Review Graphic Designer: Mike Marosy Here are more excerpts from Culbertson’s letter. Read Culbertson’s Watch a 2010 video with Frank Culbertson as he reflects on the NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) News items for publication in Goddard View must be received letter in its entirety. events of 9/11 ten years later. To download the above image, click mission passed a Systems Integration by noon Wednesday of each week. You may submit contribu- on it. n Review, which deems a mission ready to tions to the editor via e-mail at [email protected]. Ideas “I had just finished a number of tasks this morning, the most time- integrate instruments onto the spacecraft. for new stories are welcome but will be published as space consuming being the physical exams of all crew members. In a MMS will observe magnetic reconnection, allows. All submissions are subject to editing. which creates explosive bursts of energy private conversation following that, the flight surgeon told me they and which powers a variety of space phe- were having a very bad day on the ground. I had no idea... nomena from the aurora to solar flares. For more about MMS, click on the picture. Volume 8 Issue 8 • September 2012 3 NASA voyage TO EXPLORE SEA SALTINESS AND CLimate By: Maria-José Viñas NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic’s To learn more about what drives salinity, the SPURS researchers will saltiest spot to get a detailed, three dimensional picture of how deploy an array of instruments and platforms, including autonomous A salt content fluctuates in the ocean’s upper layers and how these gliders, sensor-laden buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles. Some variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet. will be collected before the research vessel heads to the Azores, but others will remain in place for a year or more, providing scientists with The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission dubbed the Salinity data on seasonal variations of salinity. Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. The new Some of the devices used during SPURS to explore the Atlantic’s salti- data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA’s Aquarius est spot will focus on the outer edges of the study area, traveling for instrument has been collecting from space since August 2011. hundreds of miles and studying the broadest salinity features. Other instruments will explore smaller areas nested inside the research site, SPURS scientists aboard the research vessel Knorr leave from the focusing on smaller fluxes of salt in the waters. The suite of ocean Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and head instruments will complement data from NASA’s salinity-sensing instru- toward a spot known as the Atlantic surface salinity maximum, located ment aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas- halfway between the Bahamas and the western coast of North Africa. D) observatory, and be integrated into real-time computer models that The expedition also is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmo- will help guide researchers to the most interesting phenomena in the spheric Administration and the National Science Foundation. cruise area. The researchers will spend about three weeks onsite deploying instru- “We’ll be able to look at lots of different scales of salinity variability in “What if the drought ments and taking salinity, temperature and other measurements, before the ocean, some of which can be seen from space, from a sensor like sailing to the Azores to complete the voyage on Oct. 9. Aquarius,” said David Fratantoni, a physical oceanographer with Woods in the U.S. Midwest Hole and a member of the SPURS expedition. “But we’re also trying to They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most see variations in the ocean that can’t be resolved by current satellite became permanent?” worrisome effects of climate change—the acceleration of Earth’s water technology.” cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation increases, altering the frequency, strength, and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with The 2012 SPURS measurements in the North Atlantic will help scien- far-reaching implications for life on Earth. tists understand the behavior of other high-salinity regions around the world. A second SPURS expedition in 2015 will investigate low-salinity “What if the drought in the U.S. Midwest became permanent? To under- regions where there is a high input of fresh water, such as the mouth of stand whether that could happen, we must understand the water cycle a large river or the rainy belts near the equator. n and how it will change as the climate continues to warm,” said Ray- mond Schmitt, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole and principal Above: Two NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) investigator for SPURS.