OCO-2 Data to Lead Scientists Forward into the Past

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 23, 2014

Scientists will use measurements from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 to track atmospheric carbon dioxide to sources such as these wildfires in Siberia, whose smoke plumes quickly carry the greenhouse gas worldwide. The fires were imaged on May 18 by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer instrument on the Terra satellite. Image courtesy NASA/LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. For a larger version of this image please go here.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, which launched on July 2, will soon be providing about 100,000 high-quality measurements each day of carbon dioxide concentrations from around the globe. Atmospheric scientists are excited about that. But to understand the processes that control the amount of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, they need to know more than just where carbon dioxide is now. They need to know where it has been. It takes more than great data to figure that out.
"In a sense, you're trying to go backward in time and space," said David Baker, a scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "You're reversing the flow of the winds to determine when and where the input of carbon at the Earth's surface had to be to give you the measurements you see now."
Harry Potter used a magical time turner to travel to the past. Atmospheric scientists use a type of computer model called a chemical transport model.
It combines the atmospheric processes found in a climate model with additional information on important chemical compounds, including their reactions, their sources on Earth's surface and the processes that remove them from the air, known as sinks.
Baker used the example of a forest fire to explain how a chemical transport model works. "Where the fire is, at that point in time, you get a pulse of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning carbon in wood. The model's winds blow it along, and mixing processes dilute it through the atmosphere. It gradually gets mixed into a wider and wider plume that eventually gets blown around the world."

Rising-2 captured highest resolution image of earth’s surface

2014/07/16

Sendai, Japan - July 4, 2014 – Microsatellite Rising-2 has succeeded in capturing high precision images of the earth’s surface. Using a High Precision Telescope (HPT), it has successfully taken color images at a spatial resolution of 5m, the highest in the world among 50kg-class satellites.
Rising-2 is a microsatellite developed by Tohoku University and Hokkaido University. It was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, on May 24, 2014, and has been conducting various test operations. Dayside cloud imagery and night views of city lights and air glow have been acquired so far using a Wide Field-of-view CCD camera (WFC), and high resolution imaging experiments using HPT have recently started. On July 2, Rising-2 succeeded in shooting detailed landscape in sunny spells during the rainy season as shown in the following attachment.

Planetary orbit insertion failures (part 2)

by Andrew J. LePage
Monday, June 23, 2014 

[Editor’s Note: Part 1 of this article on failed attempts by spacecraft to enter orbit around other worlds in the solar system appeared last week.]

Mars Observer

Artist concept of the Mars Observer in orbit around Mars. (credit: NASA)

Mars Observer was the first American mission to Mars since Viking was launched in 1975. It was the first in NASA’s new Planetary Observer series of missions that adapted existing spacecraft and instruments for planetary missions with the intent to keep costs low in a time of tight federal budgets. To this end, Mars Observer employed General Electric’s three-axis stabilized Satcom K communication satellite bus as well as subsystems from military and civilian polar orbiting meteorological satellites. Mars Observer’s mission was to perform a wide range of investigations of Mars using an extensive suite of instruments from a circular 350-kilometer (218-mile) orbit.

Although there are many possible causes, the consensus seems to be that Mars Observer was lost as a result of a fatal failure of the propulsion system.

After years of delays, cost overruns, and a switch from the Space Shuttle to a Commercial Titan III/TOS for launch as a result of the 1986 Challenger disaster, Mars Observer finally lifted off on September 25, 1992, and was sent on its way to Mars. In order to avoid issues encountered with the propulsion system on the Viking spacecraft during their transit to Mars, the decision had been made seven months before launch to postpone the pressurization of the propellant tanks that fed a redundant pair of 490-newton (110-pound-force) bipropellant engines to be used for major maneuvers, including the vital 28-minute, 50-second orbit insertion burn. Minor course corrections took place during the cruise to Mars in a “blow down” mode that did not require full pressurization of the system.