Division News

First Hayabusa samples transferred to NASA

Dr. Scott Sandford of NASA-ARC made a trip to Japan in December 2011 to join Japanese colleagues at the SPring-8 cyclotron facility in order to study some of the particles returned from asteroid Itokawa by the Hayabusa spacecraft.

NEEMO 15

Darlene Lim (N15 Science Team Lead) and Margarita Marinova supported the NEEMO 15 science activities from October 16-25 in Key Largo, Florida. Margarita also participated as a support diver for the N15 Aquarius saturation crew.

NASA Ames involved in new lunar initiative called RESOLVE: Exploring the lunar poles for resource potential.

Lunar scientists in code SST are involved in a multi-center effort to design and build a payload that would locate valuable resources at the lunar poles. The LCROSS mission has revealed that some locations at the lunar poles are unexpectedly rich in water and other volatiles.

Ames Science Missions

Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, mission will use a solar telescope and spectrograph to explore the solar chromospheres. This is a crucial region for understanding energy transport into the solar wind and an archetype for stellar atmospheres. Recent discoveries have shown the chromosphere is significantly more dynamic and structured than previously thought.

Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX (GEMS)

Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX, or GEMS, will use an X-ray telescope to track the flow of highly magnetized matter into super massive black holes. Among the thousands of X-ray sources observed with prior and current X-ray satellites, only one astrophysical object, the Crab Nebula, has been measured in polarized X-rays.