Overview of NASA's Science Mission Directorate

Editor's Notes

1. To support the Vision and further NASA’s mission… The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) engages the Nation’s science community, sponsors scientific research, and develops and deploys satellites and probes in collaboration with NASA’s partners around the world to answer fundamental questions requiring the view from and into space. SMD seeks to understand the origins, evolution, and destiny of the universe and to understand the nature of the strange phenomena that shape it. SMD also seeks to understand: the nature of life in the universe and what kinds of life may exist beyond Earth; the solar system, both scientifically and in preparation for human exploration; and the Sun called heliophysics to undrstand the sun and its effects on the solar system And the earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs
2. December 18, 2009 -- SOFIA reached a milestone Friday when doors covering the plane’s fully opened in flight. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a modified 747 jet known as SOFIA, flew for one hour and 19 minutes, which included two minutes with the telescope’s doors fully opened. The goal was to allow engineers to understand how air flows in and around the telescope. It was the first time outside air has interacted with the part of the plane that carries the 98-inch infrared telescope. “ Today we opened the telescope cavity door, the first time we have fully exposed the telescope and the largest cavity ever flown while in flight,” said Bob Meyer, SOFIA program manager at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. “This is a significant step toward certifying NASA’s next great observatory for future study of the universe.” Besides these test flights of the airplane, two flights to operate and verify the scientific capabilities of the telescope assembly are planned for spring 2010. Telescope systems such as the vibration isolation system, the inertial stabilization system and the pointing control system will be tested during daytime flights. These flights will prepare the telescope assembly for the first flight with the telescope operating. That first flight will be the initial opportunity scientists have to use the telescope and begin the process of quantifying its performance to prepare for SOFIA’s planned 20-year science program.
3. stand the nature of dark energy, a pressure that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. The imag-ing data used in the natural-color photo was taken in 2002 with HST’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Astronomers have devised a new method for measuring perhaps the greatest puzzle of our universe — dark energy. This mysterious force, discovered in 1998, is pushing our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds. For the first time, astronomers using NASA's HST were able to take advantage of a giant magnifying lens in space — a massive cluster of galaxies — to narrow in on the nature of dark energy. Their calcu-lations, when combined with data from other methods, significantly increase the accuracy of dark energy measurements. This may eventually lead to an explanation of what the elusive phenomenon really is. "We have to tackle the dark energy problem from all sides," said Eric Jullo, an astronomer at NASA's JPL, Pasadena, Calif. "It's important to have several methods, and now we've got a new, very powerful one." Jullo is lead author of a paper on the findings appearing in the Aug. 20 issue of the journal Science. Scientists aren't clear about what dark energy is, but they do know that it makes up a large chunk of our universe, ~72%. Another chunk, ~24%, is thought to be dark matter, also mysterious in nature but easier to study than dark energy because of its gravitational influence on matter that we can see. The rest of the universe, a mere 4%, is the stuff that makes up people, planets, stars, and everything made up of atoms. In their new study, the science team used images from Hubble to examine a massive cluster of galaxies, named Abell 1689, which acts as a magnifying, or gravitational, lens. The gravity of the cluster causes galaxies behind it to be imaged multiple times into distorted shapes, sort of like a fun-house mirror reflection that warps your face. Using these distorted images, the scientists were able to figure out how light from the more distant, background galaxies had been bent by the cluster — a characteristic that depends on the nature of dark energy. Their method also depends on precise ground-based measurements of the distance and speed at which the background galaxies are traveling away from us. The team used these data to quantify the strength of the dark energy that is causing our universe to accelerate. According to the scientists, their method required multiple, meticulous steps. They spent the last several years developing specialized mathematical models and precise maps of the matter — both dark and "normal" — constituting the Abell 1689 cluster. "We can now apply our technique to other gravitational lenses," said co-author Priya Natarajan, a cosmologist at Yale Univ, New Haven, Conn. "We're exploiting a beautiful phenomenon in nature to learn more about the role that dark energy plays in our universe.” Object Name : Abell 1689 Object Description: Galaxy Cluster Constellation : Virgo Position (J2000): R.A. 13h11m 34s.20 Dec. -01° 21' 56".0 Distance : The distance to the lensing cluster is 2.2 billion light-years (675 megaparsecs). The distance to the lensed galaxy is about 12.8 billion light-years. Instrument: ACS/WFC Exposure Date(s): June 12-21, 2002 Exposure Time: 10.5 hours Filters : F475W (g), F775W (i), and F850LP (z) Color: This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS instrument on the HST. Several filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: F850LP (z) red; F775W (i) green; F475W (g) blue; Dark Matter Map blue First Use of Cosmic Lens to Probe Dark Energy Released: August 19, 2010 ID: STScI-2010-26 Credit: NASA , ESA , E. Jullo (JPL), P. Natarajan (Yale University), and J.-P. Kneib (Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, CNRS, France) This is the HST image of the inner region of Abell 1689, an immense cluster of galaxies located 2.2 billion lt-yrs away. Dark matter in the cluster is map-ped by plotting the plethora of arcs produced by the light from background galaxies that is warped by the foreground cluster's gravitational field. Dark matter cannot be photographed, but its distribution is shown in the blue overlay. The dark matter concen-tration & distribution is then used to better under-
4. ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA's Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS. In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on HST’s Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the 1st-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris ~21.5 billion miles across & having a sharp inner edge. This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system & contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto. Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, (UC Berkeley), & team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge. Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions. Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the Nov 14, 2008 issue of Science magazine. "Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kalas says. "Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is 'follow the dust,'" said team member Mark Clampin (GSFC). Observations taken 21 months apart by HST’s Advanced Camera for Surveys' coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, & is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or ~10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun. The planet is brighter than expected for an object of 3 Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice & dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring's estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites. Kalas & his team used HST to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, & made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut's starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that 1 of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the 2 exposures corresponds to an 872-yr-long orbit as calculated from Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Future observations will attempt to see the planet in IR light & will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-yr-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet's orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass. Object Name: Fomalhaut b Constellation: Piscis Austrinus (Piscis Australis) Object Description : Exoplanet Orbiting Fomalhaut Filters: F435W (B), F606W (V), and F814W (I) Position (J2000): (of Fomalhaut) R.A. 22h 57m 39s.05 Dec. -29° 37' 20".05 Distance: 25 light-years (8 parsecs) Dimensions: This image is ~375 AU (49 arcseconds) wide. Instrument: ACS/HRC Exposure Date(s): October 2004 & July 2006 Exposure Time: 11.4 hours Hubble Directly Observes a Planet Orbiting Another Star ID: STScI-2008-39 Release Date: November 13, 2008 This visible-light image from the HST shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas (UC, Berkeley) NASA's HST has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than 3 times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 l-yrs away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish." Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting
5. Data set: 40 hours of observations in late August ’09  detections at Y ~27.5 mag Vastly superior IR sensitivity (20-30X) over previous HST instruments circled objects in the frame are at z~8 (small very red ‘dots’) stars (with diffraction spikes) are within our Galaxy. Light left z=8 galaxies when universe was 600 million years old. And has been traveling to us for 13.1 billion years. Light left stars in our Galaxy on the order of ~10,000 years ago [exact distance to stars in frame unknown to me] Nearest Galaxies in the frame (e.g. spiral at lower right) are at redshifts less that 1. Light left those objects after Earth was already formed, But has take a ~billion years to get to us.
6. September 16, 1999 YELLOWSTONE PARK IS OLD FAITHFUL STAND-IN FOR JUPITER'S MOON        NASA scientists have found that when it comes to teaching educators about volcanoes in the solar system, there's no place like Jupiter's fiery moon Io -- except for Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.        With its blasting geysers and bubbling thermal vents, "it's almost like being there," said Leslie Lowes of JPL, lead outreach coordinator for NASA's Galileo mission studying Jupiter and its moons. "Yellowstone is the closest we can come to taking teachers to Io without actually putting them on a spacecraft."
7. The image on the left shows a region of Europa's crust made up of blocks which are thought to have broken apart and "rafted" into new positions. These features are the best geologic evidence to date that Europa may have had a subsurface ocean at some time in its past. Combined with the geologic data, the presence of a magnetic field leads scientists to believe an ocean is most likely present at Europa today. In this false color image, reddish-brown areas represent non-ice material resulting from geologic activity. White areas are rays of material ejected during the formation of the 25-km diameter impact crater Pwyll (see global view). Icy plains are shown in blue tones to distinguish possibly coarse-grained ice (dark blue) from fine-grained ice (light blue). Long, dark lines are ridges and fractures in the crust, some of which are more than 3,000 kilometers (1,850 miles) long. These images were obtained by NASA's Galileo spacecraft during September 7, 1996, December 1996, and February 1997 at a distance of 677,000 kilometers (417,489 miles).
8. This unprocessed image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its Nov. 21, 2009 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. It shows the moon's south polar region, where jets of water vapor and other particles spew from fissures on the surface. Recent Cassini images of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. The image was taken looking more or less broadside at the "tiger stripe" fractures observed in earlier Enceladus images. It shows discrete plumes of a variety of apparent sizes above the limb of the moon.The greatly enhanced and colorized image shows the enormous extent of the fainter, larger-scale component of the plume.Imaging scientists, as reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).
9. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
10. HSRL – High Spectral Resolution Lidar - When the lidar hits an oil patch, it will reflect in a different way than it does over open water. The way the sun and laser light reflect off the ocean surface may tell scientists how thick and dense the oil is