NASA News: NASA Details Achievements Of Lunar Spacecraft

WASHINGTON -- NASA has declared full mission success for the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). LRO changed our view of the entire moon
and brought it into sharper focus with unprecedented detail.

NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) operated the LRO
spacecraft and its instruments during the one-year mission phase. Now
that the final data from the instruments have been added to the
agency's Planetary Data System, the mission has completed the full
success requirements. The data system, which is publicly available,
archives data from past and present planetary missions as well as
astronomical observations and laboratory data.

The rich new portrait rendered by LRO's seven instruments is the
result of more than 192 terabytes of data, images and maps, the
equivalent of nearly 41,000 typical DVDs.

"LRO is now in the very capable hands of NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, with ongoing, near continuous acquisition of science
data," said Douglas Cooke, associate administrator of ESMD at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "Exploration will be well served by the
LRO science mission, just as the LRO exploration mission has
benefited lunar science."

The primary objective of the mission was to enable safe and effective
exploration of the moon. "We needed to leverage the very best the
science community had to offer," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar
scientist of ESMD. "And by doing that, we've fundamentally changed
our scientific understanding of the moon."

The most precise and complete topographic maps to date of the moon's
complex, heavily cratered landscape have been created from more than
four billion measurements, which are still coming in, taken by LRO's
Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). LOLA has taken more than 100
times more measurements than all previous lunar instruments of its
kind combined, opening up a world of possibilities for future
exploration and for science.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) revealed stunning
details after imaging nearly 5.7 million square kilometers of the
moon's surface during the mission's exploration phase. That is
roughly the same amount of land as all contiguous states west of the
Mississippi River. Though earlier missions also imaged the moon, what
sets LROC apart is its ability to image with surface pixels that are
only 1.5 feet in size, small enough to distinguish details never before possible.

"With this resolution, LRO could easily spot a picnic table on the
moon," said LRO's Project Scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

While studying the Hermite crater near the moon's north pole, LRO's
Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment found the coldest spot in the
solar system, with a temperature of minus 415 degrees Fahrenheit
(minus 248 degrees Celsius or 25 kelvins).

To further explore these regions, LRO's Lyman Alpha Mapping Project,
which can "see" in the dark, is imaging the shaded areas, while
LOLA's precise measurements map solar illumination. This work has
provided new insight into the shadowed regions and also revealed
areas that receive nearly continuous sun. Because sunlight itself is
a resource on the moon, knowing there are areas that get sun for
approximately 243 days a year and never have a period of total
darkness for more than 24 hours is extremely valuable.

Complementing those efforts are both the Lunar Exploration Neutron
Detector (LEND) and the Miniature Radio Frequency advanced radar,
which are searching for deposits of water ice. LEND also seeks
hydrogen, which could be used potentially as fuel. LRO's Cosmic Ray
Telescope for the Effects of Radiation is studying the lunar
radiation environment, which is important to keep astronauts healthy and safe.

LRO launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on
June 18, 2009.

The spacecraft was built and is managed by Goddard. For more
information about LRO, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/LRO

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NASA Briefs Media on Air Quality Research Flights Over Maryland

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT on
Thursday, June 23, to preview the upcoming series of aircraft
research flights over the Baltimore-Washington traffic corridor to
study urban air pollution.

NASA research satellites monitor many air pollution components, but it
is a challenge to use these measurements from space to detect
pollution near the ground. This multi-year airborne field campaign
will help improve the capability of satellites to measure near
surface-level atmospheric composition.

The campaign is called DISCOVER-AQ, or Deriving Information on Surface
Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant
to Air Quality. Beginning next week, two NASA aircraft, one of which
will fly at low altitude, will make a series of flights to measure
gaseous and particulate pollution. The flights will be coordinated
with extensive ground observation sites in Maryland from the D.C.
Beltway to the northeast of Baltimore.

The teleconference participants are:
-- Jim Crawford, DISCOVER-AQ principal investigator, NASA's Langley
Research Center, Hampton, Va.
-- Ken Pickering, DISCOVER-AQ project scientist, NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
-- Dave Krask, atmospheric chemist, Maryland Department of the
Environment, Baltimore
-- Jim Szykman, research engineer, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency Office of Research and Development, Hampton
-- Terry Keating, environmental scientist, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Office of Air and Radiation, Washington

To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Steve
Cole at 202-358-0918 or stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov for dial-in
instructions. Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on
NASA's website at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

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NASA Sets Sail on Second Leg of Arctic Ocean Research Voyage

WASHINGTON -- Scientists embark this week from Alaska on the second
and final campaign of a NASA field campaign to study how changing
conditions in the Arctic affect the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems.

On June 25, the ICESCAPE mission, or "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems
and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment," resumes its
shipborne investigation of the impacts of climate change in the
Chukchi and Beaufort seas along Alaska's western and northern coasts.
Research teams depart from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, aboard the U.S.
Coast Guard Cutter Healy.

The field campaign takes 47 scientists for five weeks to the Arctic
Ocean, where a variety of instruments will be used onboard the Healy
and deployed into the ocean and on the sea ice. Following the
mission's first campaign in summer 2010, the second year of sampling
seeks to find year-to-year differences and provide data for new lines
of investigation.

Combined observations from the field and from NASA satellites are
critical to understanding the Arctic, where the signals of climate
change are amplified. The accelerated decline of Arctic sea ice
extent and thickness exemplifies this trend, and scientists want to
know how this change affects other ocean processes and marine life.

"Multidisciplinary field campaigns like ICESCAPE take advantage of
simultaneous satellite and field measurements," said Carlos Del
Castillo, acting program manager of the Ocean Biology and
Biogeochemistry Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The
advantage of satellites is that we can routinely collect observations
of the whole planet. That data combined with field work and computer
modeling gives us a better understanding of how the Earth system works."

Phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that live in watery environments,
are a key focus of the campaign. They form the base of the aquatic
food web, participate in cycling Earth's carbon between the
atmosphere and the ocean and are susceptible to climate change. NASA
has monitored changes in phytoplankton from space worldwide with the
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on the Aqua
satellite and the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor, which ended
observations in 2010.

"Last year, ICESCAPE nailed down quite a few things in terms of the
phytoplankton work," said Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University in Palo
Alto, Calif., the mission's chief scientist. "We know pretty well now
how fast they are growing and what they are responding to. The repeat
measurements from this voyage will help us confirm what's going on."

The 2010 campaign gave researchers a glimpse of what might be
happening in Barrow Canyon, one of most productive areas for
phytoplankton growth in the Beaufort-Chukchi region. While many
blooms last just a few weeks before consuming all of the local
nutrients and declining, the bloom in Barrow Canyon gets its start in
spring and carries on through summer.

Scientists think the extended bloom can be explained by unique
patterns in the path and timing of ocean currents. In spring, a
stream of water carries nutrients from the Pacific Ocean up through
the Bering Strait and delivers them to Barrow Canyon. The water hugs
the coast and arrives quickly, providing the nutrients for the bloom
to get its start. Two other streams take a more circuitous route and
arrive later, sustaining the bloom through summer.

"With this year's voyage, we hope to acquire more details about the
physical processes pulling nutrients from deep water to the surface,"
Arrigo said.

New to ICESCAPE in 2011, the ship will forge north through the
Beaufort Sea to explore the relationship between shallow water on the
continental shelf and deep water in the Canada Basin. Phytoplankton
on the shallow shelves tend to flourish when the ice retreats and
scientists want to find out what feeds the bloom.

Last year, researchers saw some indication that nutrients were moving
between deep and shallow water. Wind unexpectedly blew thick,
multiyear sea ice south to the edge of the shelf, at some places up
to 20 feet thick. The ice proved too thick for the icebreaker to
penetrate. The Healy, the newest and most technologically advanced
U.S. polar icebreaker, is designed to break four-and-a-half feet of
ice continuously at three knots.

This year, the field campaign begins two weeks later, which means the
Healy is expected to encounter thinner, summer ice and thus have a
better chance of exploring the ecosystems in water that spends most
of the year under a blanket of ice.

For updates on the five-week ICESCAPE voyage, visit the mission blog at:

http://go.usa.gov/WwU

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Awards Spectrum Management And Engineering Services Contract

GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA has modified a letter contract with ASRC
Research and Technology Solutions of Greenbelt, Md., for Spectrum
Management, Engineering Services and Programmatic Resource Management
Support.

This cost-plus-fixed fee, indefinite-delivery/

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