I was hanging out at Spacex NASA JPL and Caltech talking to astrophysicists and engineers and just trying to get some ideas about our human perspective
When I was discussing the idea with an astrophysicist at JPL he upped the ante
and its residents according to Rosaly Lopes a volcanologist at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena Calif. Lopes was not a consultant on the film.)
The new Global Forest Watch will update monthly at a medium resolution with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua satellites.
but every year the map updates with much finer-grained imagery from NASA's Landsat program.
Lead study author Fernando Espã rito-Santo a research scientist at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena Calif. combined satellite data airborne lidar (laser surface imagery)
We found that large natural disturbances the sort not captured by plots have only a tiny effect on carbon cycling throughout the Amazon study co-author Sassan Saatchi of JPL said in a statement.
In order to make agricultural waste into a suitable fuel for jet engines manufacturers would first need to break it down into sugars mixed with yeast
When mixed with kerosene theses hydrocarbons can be burned in jet engines. The hard part will be finding the most suitable microorganisms
The larger global community has credible evidence that where national park rangers and community ecoguards are out patrolling
A world away but seemingly from the same tale is Tinkerbella nana an unbelievably small parasitoid wasp with feathery delicate wings.
Electronics and spacecraft parts are manufactured in clean rooms the latter because scientists would rather not find life on mars only to learn humans put it there.
because it can contribute to high ozone levels near the ground said NASA's Earth Observatory.
when gasoline and coal are burned Bryan Duncan an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center told Earth Observatory.
#Strange Spikes Over Siberia Puzzle Astronauts Houston we have a question: What are these weird spiky shapes we're
That's what astronauts were asking this June when the sight of strange dark-green features running along Siberia's Kulunda Steppe left them stumped according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
The curving features streak across the plain near the Ob river and can be seen from the International Space station (ISS)
when it flies over the Northern hemisphere's 52nd parallel the highest latitude of its orbit.
Fortunately for the ISS astronauts'burning curiosity researchers at NASA Johnson Space center in Houston had answers.
The spikes also appear in a winter scene snapped by an ISS astronaut more than a decade ago in 2003.
The only thing holding it in is said the ice shelf Robert Thomas a glaciologist at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island Va. who was involved not in the study.
According to NASA the first living creature in space was named a rhesus monkey Albert I. His launch took place in White sands New mexico on June 11 1948.
NASA's Earth Observatory released a new high-resolution image of an Alaskan forest near the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge that has been left off of most maps.
because it is so difficult to reach Doug Morton a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland told the Earth Observatory.
and a group of NASA researchers are sweeping across the Alaskan landscape in a low-flying airplane equipped with a portable imaging system called G-Liht.
NASA's Landsat satellites which have been snapping pictures of the Earth's surface for more than 40 years now have instruments that can produce images with 49-to 98-foot (15 to 30 m) resolutions.
#NASA Video Captures Stunning Volcano Eruption View from Space On June 12 2009 the International Space station happened to be passing over the Sarychev Volcano
A newly released video based on several stunning snapshots taken by astronauts reveals the beauty and power of the erupting volcano.
The plume was so immense that it cast a large shadow on the island according to NASA Earth Observatory.
and settled ash veiled nearly all of the vegetation on the island's northwestern end according to NASA Earth Observatory.
when NASA launches its Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite in July. The Los alamos team clearly demonstrated the value of remote sensing for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions said David Crisp the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) science lead at NASA s Jet propulsion laboratory.
Crisp is unaffiliated with the Los alamos study.##oeto fully exploit this capability we need to acquire measurements like this at high spatial resolution over the entire globe#Crisp said.
Brown bears are found in more places than any other bear species. They live in northwestern North america the Atlas Mountains of northwestern Africa northern Asia Europe and the Middle east.
NASA's Terra satellite went leaf peeping last week from its perch about 438 miles (705 kilometers) above the planet.
The images were released today (Sept. 30) by NASA's Earth Observatory. In Photos: Fall Foliage Seen from Space As the Earth Observatory notes the brown and orange hues are currently most prominent in Michigan's Upper Peninsula northern Wisconsin upstate New york New hampshire Vermont Maine and southern
Simulations featured in the Climate Change Tree Atlas show how some populations of fall favorites might shift.
Nature Newsthe climate community is counting the costs of losing NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO),
an instrument aboard the European space agency's Envisat that uses similar technology but has much lower resolution.
NASA can also perform some CO2 monitoring with the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, AIRS, launched aboard the Aqua satellite in 2002.
The European space agency (ESA) is mulling whether to proceed on a more advanced version of the OCO mission.
a researcher who worked on an independent feasibility study of A-SCOPE for ESA at the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment in Saclay.
Brã on believes that the ESA will not proceed with an A-SCOPE in the near term,
If NASA has the money, he hopes the agency will put another OCO up quickly
The question facing NASA is whether to push forward with an OCO II as fast as possible
NASA ponders'carbon copy'of crashed mission: Nature Newssince the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the ocean minutes after its 24 february launch,
researchers at NASA and elsewhere have been working on how else they might get the data on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that the mission was meant to collect.
Within a week of losing the satellite, NASA, which spent US$278 million and seven years developing OCO, put together a committee of two dozen climate scientists to weigh up various options.
Many scientists, including OCO's principal investigator David Crisp, of the Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, think that probing the atmosphere with lasers will eventually offer a way to get round-the-clock data
In a recent competition to design atmospheric-science satellites the European space agency eliminated a laser-based carbon-dioxide-monitoring mission
The technology for a similar NASA mission called ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights,
or on the International Space station (ISS) would also take a long time, and in the case of the ISS would miss the polar regions.
So as expected the bottom line of the report by Crisp's committee, submitted to NASA on 2 april
Michael Freilich, head of NASA's Earth-science division, has sent the white paper out for review and says he will make a decision possibly in May.
It might seem that the $150 million recently added to NASA's fiscal-year 2009 budget for Earth science by Congress,
a US Geological Survey land-mapping mission that NASA is procuring, and Glory, a mission due to be launched later this year to studyaerosols
which are, after all, NASA's stock in trade leads politicians and policy-makers to neglect ground-and aircraft-based measurements.
Says Ken Jucks, OCO programme manager at NASA, In all our opinions, the need for these data is just as high,
They show up as hot pixels in the European space agency's Ionia World Fire Atlas, which has mapped fires around the world every month from 1996 to the present.
He and his colleagues used cosmic-dust data from the Cassini spacecraft currently flying around Saturn to study grains in the E ring.
is an extension of work done by Sassan Saatchi at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena and colleagues,
South korea's first space rocket:(see image, right. It may have been watched by millions, but the launch of South korea's first space rocket on 25 august was only a'partial success',according to the country's science ministry.
The two-stage Naro-1 blasted off from Naro Space center, some 485 kilometres south of Seoul but,
as Nature went to press, it had failed to put its observation satellite into its intended orbit.
wmo. int/wcc3 31 august The ten-person presidential panel deliberating NASA's future, chaired by Norman Augustine,
Sound bites<br></br>We won't be correcting the atlas.<<br></br>Daniel Gutknecht, Swiss Federal office of Topography The swiss government last week approved expanding the country's border into Italy,
but Russian space agency Roscosmos said last week that Phobos testing couldn't be completed in time to meet this year's launch window.
The US panel charged with reviewing NASA's human spaceflight programme issued its final report last week,
Present funding doesn't match the space agency's targets, says the commission, which is chaired by ex-aerospace executive Norman Augustine.
Many of its suggestions, such as bypassing human exploration of the Moon and scrapping the Ares
A European council summit meeting in Brussels may firm up European promises to finance climate-change action in developing countries. go. nature. com/1kwxls 2 november The European space agency is scheduled to launch its Soil Moisture
The week ahead 9 october NASA's Lunar crater Remote Observation and Sensing Satellite will crash into a crater near the Moon's south pole,
and detecting ice. http://lcross. arc. nasa. gov 15-16 october'The ambitions of Europe in space'European policy-makers,
Under the changes, bodies such as the National Research Council, the National Institute of Nuclear physics and the space agency, will be able to write their own statutes and regulations.
A NASA probe sent crashing into the Cabeus crater near the Moon's north pole on 9 october ploughed up a plume containing water, hydrocarbons and, unexpectedly, mercury,
at a workshop at the European space agency's centre for Earth observation in Frascati, Italy. www. congrex. nl/09c26 21 NOVEMBER Part of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act takes effect in the United states. The act,
The collision sent hundreds of pieces of debris flying at high speed across low-Earth orbit, threatening other satellites and increasing the risk to a NASA shuttle mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope
To that end, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hosted a conference this month to look at strategies for removing debris. The solutions floated include space tugs and Earth-based lasers.
a payload shroud stayed stuck to a Taurus booster rocket, and NASA's US$280 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the sea,
dashing the hopes of scientists who wanted to use the satellite to measure sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (see'Climate researchers in a spin after satellite loss').
'However, only about half of the money from Congress is new the rest must be gleaned from other NASA Earth science accounts.
Moreover, NASA's budget is likely to be trimmed flat or in the coming years and demands for the agency to launch other Earth-monitoring satellites continue undiminished.
Sassan Saatchi, an environmental scientist at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, worked on one study with researchers at the carbon consulting firm Winrock International in Arlington, Virginia.
Like the Winrock study, it includes spectral data from NASA satellites as well as laser measurements of forest canopy height from an instrument on NASA's Ice, Cloud,
Sweden. go. nature. com/PUFASN 11 december NASA's orbiting infrared telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch. http://wise. ssl. berkeley. edu 14-18 december The American Geophysical Union meets in San francisco,
In May, Steven Pravdo of the Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues raised fresh hopes for the technique
Two space missions in the works the European space agency's GAIA, due to launch in 2012, and NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, the launch date for
which is yet to be set will use the technique to search for planets as small as Earth around Sun-like stars,
on 18 february the European space agency selected three medium-sized missions to continue development within its'Cosmic Vision 2015-2025'programme,
The European space agency has postponed the planned 25 february launch of its satellite for monitoring variations in the extent and thickness of polar ice.
Events Wise delivers infrared wisdom NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has offered up the first pictures
Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace, based in Mojave, California, gets excited by the promise of cheap spaceflight,
NASA announced on 3 february. The mission was slated originally to come to end in 2008, and had already been extended to 2010.
and Technology. go. nature. com/YWJQIN 12 february NASA holds a public'state of the agency'meeting,
The minute specks of dust were collected by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which launched in 1999 with the aim of catching pristine interstellar grains and bringing them back to Earth.
The Stardust researchers say that the interstellar grains nabbed by their spacecraft may provide a unique way to study the matter between stars.
rather than micrometeorites or even pieces of the spacecraft knocked loose by debris. It took four years of searching to identify the two potential interstellar dust particles,
The new database, called the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas, is important because the summer monsoon,
is one of the reasons his team compiled the drought atlas, the first analysis of which is published in Science1.
Indian space agency ISRO's first test flight of a homemade cryogenic engine powered by fuels that are liquid at very low temperatures ended in failure on 15 april,
US President Barack Obama tells Florida's Kennedy space center on 15 april that sending astronauts to the Moon is so last century (see go. nature. com/zwdf2w for more.
NASA's ageing research labs are need in dire of an overhaul, according to a report released on 11 may by the National Academies.
and NASA is planning to launch a second version of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory by 2013 (a rocket failure sent the first one hurtling into the Pacific ocean in February 2009).
then trapped and clipped the wings of one bird from each group and repeated the data collection.
The modified Boeing 747sp aircraft sports a hole in its fuselage for a 2. 5-metre telescope,
The US$3. 4-billion mission a collaboration between NASA and the German Aerospace Center has had its share of turmoil
when it was axed temporarily from the NASA budget. Scientific operations should begin in October with full capacity about 800 hours of observation time a year expected by 2014.
the first Howard Hughes Medical Institute research lab outside the United states. See go. nature. com/Uhiftr for more.
The debate began with a 2007 study1 that used data gathered by NASA's Terra satellite to argue that the canopy of the Amazon rainforest grew
In particular, he is pushing for NASA to prioritize a mission called the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (Hyspiri),
Research Milky way's double bubble Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a team of astronomers declared last week that they had discovered two gargantuan'bubbles'of ray-emitting particles extending north and south of our Galaxy's centre (M. Su et al.
Researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on 16 november that analysis of the mineral compositions of some 1
Atlas Energy of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the latest to be snapped up; on 9 november, oil group Chevron of San ramon, California, said it would buy the firm in a US$4. 3-billion deal.
Says Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york city and proprietor of the Realclimate blog:
Venus probe flop In a bitter disappointment for Japan's space agency, its Akatsuki spacecraft failed to enter orbit around Venus on 6 december.
The probe was intended to monitor the hot planet's atmosphere but must now wait six years for another chance to reach orbit.
Events Private spaceflight success Spacex (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) has become the first private firm to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it to Earth.
NASA expects the craft to ferry astronauts, supplies and research materials to the International Space station when its shuttle fleet retires next year.
Spacex, based in Hawthorne, California, hopes to dock Dragon with the station during its next demonstration launch,
NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati will be NASA's chief scientist from 3 january, the agency's administrator Charles Bolden announced on 13 december.
A researcher on polar ice who worked at NASA for a decade until 2008, Abdalati is currently director of the Earth science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He is NASA's first chief scientist since James Garvin, who served in the post during 2004 05.
The 2. 5-metre, mid-infrared telescope is mounted on the back of a Boeing 747 that flies in the stratosphere above much of the atmospheric water vapour that absorbs infrared light.
NASA and the German Aerospace Center, who together fund SOFIA, plan two more science flights before Christmas.
is scheduled to make its first attempt to launch a spacecraft into orbit on its Falcon 9 rocket and return the craft to Earth.
NASA waste NASA could end up spending US$575 million on a space programme that has already been cancelled,
This means that NASA has to fund Constellation former president George w bush's programme to return to the Moon and reach Mars, at $200 million a month until 4 march.
and launch vehicles below limits that are lower than those agreed in a previous treaty; it also allows hands-on inspections to verify the numbers.
Stephen Crooks, climate change programme manager at the environmental consultancy ESA PWA in San francisco, California, estimates that emissions from drained mangroves and salt marshes total half a billion tonnes
Research Comet flyby NASA's Stardust spacecraft sped past comet Tempel 1 on 14 february. The probe,
Coming up 22 23 february In La jolla, California, leading genetics researchers gather to discuss the promise of human genomics over the next decade. go. nature. com/w8zzsx 23 february NASA's Glory
which funds agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation. Each subcommittee must now make spending recommendations,
Coming up 14 february NASA's Stardust mission 墉 rebranded NEXT 墉 is due to fly by the comet Tempel 1. It is the first follow-up mission to a comet:
The NASA satellite MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) captured 490 images of the region early last year at a resolution of 250 metres.
Research Shuttle swansong NASA's space shuttle Discovery launched for its 39th and final flight on 24 february, taking six astronauts as well as supplies and additional science capabilities to the International Space station on an 11
NASA's other two shuttles are each due to fly once more this year before the agency's shuttle fleet retires.
Booking a rocket The first contracts have been signed to send researchers into suborbit using commercial spacecraft.
The Southwest Research Institute, in San antonio, Texas, said last week it had paid for six scientists to fly with XCOR Aerospace,
whose spacecraft will take off from Spaceport America in New mexico. The institute may opt to purchase a total of 17 seats with the two companies
and cancer. go. nature. com/5lwqim 7 11 march Preliminary analysis of dust picked up from a distant asteroid last year by the Hayabusa spacecraft will be among highlights of the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science
Shuttles at rest The four remaining vehicles of the US Space shuttle fleet were assigned their final resting places on 12 april.
Atlantis will remain at the Kennedy space center in Merritt Island, Florida; Endeavour will head to the California Science Center in Los angeles;
Research Brain atlas debuts A genetic and anatomical map of the human brain, bankrolled by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen,
The Seattle, Washington-based Allen Brain science Institute's human brain atlas (www. brain-map. org) logged gene expression patterns and biochemical activity at 1,
The US$55-million project follows a mouse brain atlas released in 2006, and a map of the mouse spinal cord two years later.
Gravity probe B NASA announced on 4 may that its Gravity Probe B mission 墉 conceived
who developed the current method for detecting vegetation using NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensor
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, joined with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Palo alto, California,
The heart of the CAO's US$8. 3-million sensing system dubbed the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System (ATOMS) is a spectroscopic imager designed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL
This really has taken everything we have learned at NASA and brought it to bear in the most advanced airborne imaging spectrometer ever built,
lead engineer on the project at the JPL. With data from a single flight that used an earlier version of the system,
The 22-23 Â September meeting, hosted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase,
NASA/JPL-CALTECHEVENTSCURIOSITY bound for Mars NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity, is on its way to Gale crater on Mars. The 900-kilogram rover (pictured,
being tested On earth last year) launched on 26 november from the Kennedy space center in Florida. It will spend the next nine months travelling to Mars
California. sites. agu. org/fallmeeting5-9 december The first conference on the scientific results from the Kepler exoplanet mission takes place at the NASA Ames Research Park, Moffett Field,
Events Heavenly kiss China's unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft docked with its Tiangong 1 module on 2 november,
Two more missions, perhaps carrying astronauts, will follow in 2012. If the next stages of testing go to plan,
China will launch further modules to be assembled into a space station by 2020. Back from'Mars'Six men have survived 520 days cooped up in 3 small rooms at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow
The rift (pictured, around 80 metres wide and 50 metres deep) was seen first in Mid-october by NASA's Operation Icebridge project, which released images last week.
NASA science head John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who carried out repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope
will head NASA's US$5-billion science mission directorate, the agency confirmed on 19 december. Nature reported the first news of the appointment in November.
From air to orbit Rockets bound for orbit could one day be fired not from launch pads,
aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan (who won the Ansari X Prize in 2004 for designing the Spaceshipone rocket-plane,
and human payloads) would be cheaper and more flexible than the conventional launch-pad approach. See go. nature. com/ead2ql for more.
A twin Earth NASA's Kepler telescope has reached one of its major mission milestones: discovering another Earth-sized planet.
NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft are due to ease into orbit around the Moon from where they will start to map lunar gravity in March 2012. go. nature. com/msewftregulation of aviation's greenhouse-gas emissions is set to start in the European union.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASUEVENTS Fresh clue to ancient Mars water NASA's Opportunity rover has discovered veins of hydrothermally deposited minerals at the edge of Endeavour crater on Mars. The bright
Chaired by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New york, the assessment ranked hundreds of  options for reducing black carbon and ozone pollution according to their potential to reduce warming.
NASA, meanwhile, looks set to lose out, with cuts of 3. 2%to its science budget
and 21%to planetary science leading the agency's administrator Charles Bolden to cancel plans for joint Mars missions with the European space agency.
ESA, CNES, ARIANESPACE, OPTIQUE VIDEO DU CSG, L. MIRARESEARCH Vega launches Europe's Vega rocket, a low-cost launcher intended to get small scientific satellites into low-Earth orbit,
The inaugural launch, from the European space agency's spaceport in Kourou, French guiana, carried nine satellites; its main research payload was the Italian Space agency's Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES, pictured:
sphere on top of the rocket's payload) which will study the Lense-Thirring effect, a distortion of space-time caused by Earth's gravity.
A whiff of interstellar clouda NASA spacecraft has detected directly atoms from outside the boundary of the Solar system
Mccomas presented the results today at NASA s headquarters in WASHINGTON DC, to coincide with the publication of a suite of papers detailing the results in the Astrophysical Journal.
The IBEX spacecraft is far from this boundary, in orbit around the Earth, but it has detectors that are sensitive to neutral atoms that can enter the heliosphere.
Although a previous NASA mission, Ulysses, measured neutral helium from beyond the heliosphere, IBEX is the first to measure heavier elements, such as oxygen and neon,
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