NASA Operation IceBridge: Notes from the Field (Arctic 2013)

By Sinead Farrell, Sea Ice Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / University of Maryland

Editor's note: This entry was originally posted on the Scientist's Soapbox, a blog published by the Earth Science System Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. 

Introduction:

The NASA Operation IceBridge mission began the Arctic 2013 research campaign on Monday 20th March. The mission will survey the Greenland Ice Sheet and sea ice pack of the Arctic Ocean. The NASA IceBridge mission is now in its fifth year and continues to measure Arctic sea ice thickness and snow depth. These data continue the time series of ice thickness measurements begun with NASA's ICESat in 2003, and will provide a link to the NASA ICESat-2 mission, due for launch in mid-2016.

Surveys are conducted using a specially-equipped P-3B research aircraft (see photo below) that flies above the ice carrying a number of science instruments including radar and laser altimeters, and high-resolution cameras. This year the first flight took place from Thule, Greenland over Arctic sea ice north of the Lincoln Sea, on Wednesday 20th March. IceBridge flew beneath the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite, that carries a special radar altimeter known as SIRAL. The mission was designed to fly a gridded-survey beneath the satellite to help validate CryoSat's measurements over sea ice. The aircraft then transited from Thule across the Arctic Ocean to Alaska on Thursday 21st March. Over the coming days IceBridge will attempt a number of sea ice flights over the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas from a base at Fairbanks International Airport, Alaska. ESSIC's Sinead Farrell hopes to participate in the first Alaska mission on Friday 22nd March, pending good weather. Dr. Farrell is a sea ice scientist and member of the NASA IceBridge science team.

View of a sea ice lead from the NASA P-3B. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

Daily Blog Posts:

Tuesday 19th March: Arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska on Tuesday to slightly warmer spring temperatures than I had expected. After organizing a rental car, figuring out how to use the engine heating block and the all-wheel drive, I headed for the hotel to unpack and (re)familiarize myself with the locale. The last time I enjoyed an extended visit to Fairbanks was exactly ten years ago, while I was conducting my graduate studies at University College London. Back then I also participated in a NASA airborne campaign over the Chukchi, Beaufort and Bering Seas aimed at validating the NASA AMSR-E radiometer. Things have not changed much in Fairbanks over the years!

Wednesday 20th March: The first in a series of IceBridge science flights was successfully completed on Wednesday. Although the mission was conducted far away over Arctic sea ice northwest of Greenland it was nonetheless a very exciting mission to follow. I was involved in designing a set of gridded flight-lines over the ice such that our airborne survey would provide temporally and spatially coincident measurements with CryoSat-2, while it passed high over-head. This is a technically challenging flight to conduct but things worked out well. The sea ice appeared more dynamic than we had expected, but the number of cracks in the ice, known as "leads", will actually help in the data analysis aimed at inferring sea ice thickness. While waiting for the IceBridge mission to transit from Greenland to Alaska, I will spend time visiting the International Arctic Research Center (IARC), at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks (UAF). On Wednesday I had the opportunity to meet with some of my colleagues at IARC to discuss on-going and future projects to better understand the diminishing Arctic sea ice pack. I was also able to attend a lecture by Dr. Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the topic of "Recent Changes in the Arctic Sea Ice Cover: A remote sensing perspective". Fortuitously there are many national and international sea ice scientists visiting UAF right now to participate in meetings and workshops. Some are even en route to conduct field-work on the sea ice near Barrow, Alaska. Although it's very cold (-19 degrees Celsius this morning!) and snowing, this is a great time of the year to be in Fairbanks!

Thursday 21st March: Thursday began with the exciting news that the NASA P-3 was en route to Fairbanks. Today's mission from Greenland to Alaska was flown along what is called the "Laxon Line". The flight is named in honor of University College London Professor Seymour Laxon. Seymour, my graduate advisor, died tragically 3 months ago. Seymour was a pioneer in the use of satellite altimeters to study sea ice and was the lead sea ice scientist on the CryoSat-2 mission. Today we measured ice thickness and snow depth along a flight line that crosses most of the Arctic Ocean. Thanks to a good tail-wind the P-3 landed one hour early in Fairbanks, right around lunch time. I was really lucky to watch the plane land with my colleagues Jackie Richter-Menge from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and Pam Posey from the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Once through customs we met our colleagues off the plane and welcomed them to snowy Alaska!


Friday 22nd March: On Friday we hope to conduct a third sea ice mission over the Arctic, weather permitting. We always need good weather to fly our surveys since clouds can potentially interrupt the measurements we make from the aircraft. We're particularly interested to see what is happening to the sea ice in the Southern Beaufort Sea this year after the ice pack suffered a wide-spread "break out" event in mid-February. This event caused the ice pack to fragment into smaller floes and become more dynamic. Although these break-out events are not unusual in this region, they do not normally happen in February, the dead of winter. We will provide more updates as the day progresses.

The NASA P-3B on the ramp at Fairbanks, Alaska. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

Crossing the Basin: IceBridge in Alaska

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 

Why does IceBridge fly all the way to Alaska when the rest of the campaign is in Greenland? It's an understandable question considering how far away these two locations are. But when you consider the economic importance of the regions north of Alaska and how dynamic and varying sea ice in the Arctic is, the picture becomes clearer. Much like last year, the IceBridge team made the 8 hour transit flight from Thule to Fairbanks early in the campaign.

Flight path taken from Thule, Greenland, to Fairbanks, Alaska on Mar. 21, 2013. This route and the more southerly return leg have been flown in every IceBridge Arctic campaign. The flightplan was renamed this year as a tribute to sea ice scientist Seymour Laxon. Credit: NASA

Ice on the Move

At first glance it might be easy to assume that Arctic sea ice is uniform, but the region's geography, ocean and wind currents and the ever-changing nature of ice itself mean that conditions can vary significantly across the Arctic Basin. "There are lots of different thickness gradients across the basin," said Jackie Richter-Menge, sea ice scientist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and co-lead of the IceBridge science team.

Ocean currents like the Beaufort Gyre continuously spin in the Arctic Ocean, driving ice cover along the coast of North America toward Greenland where it is compressed into thicker multi-year ice. The presence of multi-year ice is one of the biggest differences between the ice cover off the coast of Greenland and in the region of the Arctic Basin north of Alaska, which is recently dominated by ice that forms in the winter and disappears in the summer.

Digital Mapping System (DMS) image mosaic of ice in the Beaufort Sea. The lighter colored portion at the bottom right is thick sea ice, the darker blue-gray areas are thinner ice and the dark segment in the middle is open water. Credit: NASA / DMS

This seasonal ice cover is becoming more prevalent in areas north of Alaska as the thicker multi-year ice gradually melts. On the Mar. 22 IceBridge flight Richter-Menge saw firsthand how things have changed since she flew over the region earlier in her career in the 1980s. "It was notable how deep we went in the basin without seeing multi-year ice," Richter-Menge said. IceBridge didn't see multi-year ice until they were about 1000 kilometers from shore. In the early 1980s it could be found between 150 and 200 kilometers out.

Getting Better Data

These sorts of changes, along with environmental and economic concerns, contributed to the science communities increased desire for data on sea ice this part of the Arctic Basin. IceBridge had conducted transits of the entire basin from Thule to Fairbanks in previous campaigns, but starting in 2012, the mission started doing a temporary deployment in Fairbanks to get more data on areas north of Alaska.

IceBridge's increased coverage is adding to the body of knowledge on ice in this region adding a new level of detail. "It gives us a more complete view of what's going on in the basin," said Richter-Menge. The data collected on these flights give more geographic coverage to IceBridge's sea ice data products, especially the quick look product that debuted during last year's Arctic campaign. This dataset came about in response to a need for near real-time sea ice conditions for use in seasonal sea ice forecasts.

Graph of Arctic sea ice volume from the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS). Credit: Polar Science Center / University of Washington


Along with data on sea ice freeboard, the amount of ice floating above the ocean's surface, many in the scientific community have taken an interest in IceBridge's snow depth measurements. Snow depth gives a way to measure changes in precipitation rate and differences in accumulation affect how much snow is available for melt ponds. As conditions warm in the summer, snow melts and accumulates in ponds. These ponds are darker than the surrounding snow, trapping more of the sun's heat and further accelerating melting.

Jackie Richter-Menge (left) and the IceBridge team before a flight over the Beaufort Sea on Mar. 22, 2013. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

Learning and Teaching

As a guest on the flights out of Fairbanks Richter-Menge got a chance to see firsthand how IceBridge collects sea ice data. Being able to witness this complicated and involved process helps give a better-rounded picture of the mission, Richter-Menge said. In addition to the data-collection that takes up each flight, Richter-Menge got to see the work it takes to choose which mission to fly each morning. "It was impressive to watch the whole decision-making process for choosing flight lines," said Richter-Menge.

And as is often the case, the flow of information goes both ways. Richter-Menge and fellow sea ice scientist Sinead Farrell spent plenty of time on their flights sitting at a window aboard the P-3 and explaining what everyone was seeing. "We are learning a lot about sea ice with them here," said Christy Hansen, IceBridge's project manager.

NASA Creates Space Technology Mission Directorate

Today, we are formally announcing the creation of a new NASA organizational entity -- the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). This new Mission Directorate is an outgrowth of President Obama’s recognition of the critical role that space technology and innovation will play in enabling both future space missions and bettering life here on Earth. For him this has been a consistent point of emphasis from the campaign to today. The directorate will be a catalyst for the creation of technologies and innovation needed to maintain NASA leadership in space while also benefiting America's economy.

The Space Technology Mission Directorate will develop the crosscutting, advanced and pioneering new technologies needed for NASA's current and future missions, many of which also benefit America's aerospace industries, other government agencies, and address national needs. NASA will focus leadership responsibility for the existing Space Technology Program in the mission directorate, improving communication, management, and accountability of critical technology investment activities across the agency.

A robust technology development program is vital to reaching new heights in space -- and sending American astronauts to new destinations like an asteroid and Mars. A top priority of NASA is to invest in cross-cutting, transformational technologies. We focus on collaboration with industry and academia that advances our nation's space exploration and science goals while maintaining America's competitive edge in the innovation economy.

Associate Administrator Michael Gazarik will head the organization. He previously served as the director of the Space Technology Program within the Office of the Chief Technologist. James Reuther will serve as the Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs in STMD. Reuther brings years of expertise in technology development, research and project management to oversee the nine programs within the mission directorate. Reuther previously served as deputy director of the Space Technology Program within the Office of the Chief Technologist. Dorothy Rasco, formerly the business manager of the Space Shuttle Program and the manager of the Space Shuttle Program Transition and Retirement, will join the directorate as the Deputy Associate Administrator for Management, assisting with the organization’s strategic planning and management.

The Space Technology Mission Directorate will employ a portfolio approach, spanning a range of discipline areas and technology readiness levels. Research and technology development will take place within NASA centers, in academia, and industry, and leverage collaboration with other government and international partners.

NASA's Chief Technologist, Mason Peck, will continue to serve as my principal advisor and advocate on matters concerning agencywide technology policy and programs. Peck's office will lead NASA's technology transfer and commercialization efforts, integrating, tracking, and coordinating all of NASA's technology investments across the agency. The Office of the Chief Technologist also will continue to develop strategic innovative partnerships, manage agency-level competitions and prize activities, as well as document and communicate the societal impacts of the agency's technology efforts.

We are confident that STMD will greatly enhance NASA’s critical technology and innovation mission and the benefits it brings to our agency and the nation. 

Made in America, Launched in America

Today we marked another milestone in our aggressive efforts to make sure American companies are launching resupply missions from U.S. shores. Our NASA-SpaceX team completed another successful berthing of the SpaceX Dragon cargo module to the International Space Station (ISS) following its near flawless launch on the Falcon-9 booster out of Cape Canaveral, Florida Friday morning. Launching rockets is difficult, and while the team faced some technical challenges after Dragon separation from the launch vehicle, they called upon their thorough knowledge of their systems to successfully troubleshoot and fully recover all vehicle capabilities. Dragon is now once again safely berthed to the station.

I was pleased to watch the launch from SpaceX’s facility in Hawthorne, CA, and I want to congratulate the SpaceX and NASA teams, who are working side by side to ensure America continues to lead the world in space.

A little more than one year after the end of the Space Shuttle Program, our American industry partner, SpaceX, began resupplying the space station with cargo launched from our shores – and they’re on schedule to make at total of 12 resupply missions. Just last week, Orbital Sciences successfully test fired the engines of their Antares rocket, that will power a planned resupply test flight later this year from America’s newest spaceport in Wallops Island, Virginia.

Even as commercial cargo launches settle into a regular pattern, we continue to work hard on the Commercial Crew Program and the capability to once again launch our astronauts to space from U.S. soil with American companies. Our three partners - - SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada -- continue to mark milestones toward this capability, and we are confident that within the next few years, we will be reporting a new series of human space launches to low Earth orbit, part of our ongoing efforts to reach farther in space.

Industry's success in developing new space transportation systems is enabling NASA to focus on President Obama's goals of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. We continue to develop the space technologies to make these missions possible even as we marvel at the ingenuity of our commercial partners in taking us to low Earth orbit on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, all of this progress could be jeopardized with the sequestration ordered by law to be signed by the President Friday evening. The sequester could further delay the restarting of human space launches from U.S. soil, push back our next generation space vehicles, hold up development of new space technologies, and jeopardize our space-based, Earth observing capabilities.

In spite of this threat to our progress, however, we must remember that all of our investments in space are creating good jobs here on Earth and helping to inspire young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. As SpaceX demonstrated again today, tomorrow's exploration missions are happening right now, and tomorrow's innovators will have many paths from which to choose and many exciting NASA missions of which they can be a part.

Launching American Astronauts from U.S. Soil

NASA is committed to launching our astronauts on American spacecraft from U.S. soil as soon as possible. Since the end of our Space Shuttle Program in 2011, NASA has relied on the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) for the launch and safe return of astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard its Soyuz spacecraft. While our Russian counterparts have been good partners, it is unacceptable that we don't currently have an American capability to launch our own astronauts.

That’s why the Obama Administration has placed such a high priority on correcting this situation. Three years ago, the Administration put forward a public-private partnership plan, the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), to ensure that American companies would be launching our astronauts from U.S. soil by 2015. It's a plan that supports the U.S. human spaceflight program, boosts our economy, and helps create good-paying American jobs. If NASA had received the President's requested funding for this plan, we would not have been forced to recently sign a new contract with Roscosmos for Soyuz transportation flights.

Because the funding for the President's plan has been significantly reduced, we now won’t be able to support American launches until 2017. Even this delayed availability will be in question if Congress does not fully support the President's fiscal year 2014 request for our Commercial Crew Program, forcing us once again to extend our contract with the Russians. Further delays in our Commercial Crew Program and its impact on our human spaceflight program are unacceptable. That’s why we need the full $821 million the President has requested in next year’s budget to keep us on track to meet our 2017 deadline and bring these launches back to the United States.

I am pleased with the progress our commercial crew providers are making. We now have an American company resupplying cargo to the ISS -- launching from U.S. soil -- and another company on track to join in this competition. I'm confident that our ambitious plan for U.S. crew transportation, if fully funded, will allow U.S. commercial companies to launch our astronauts in just a few short years.

I'm bullish on the American aerospace industry, and I'm committed to gaining the support of the U.S. Congress to fully fund our investments in these companies and bring untold benefits to our economy.

Greenland Teacher to Gain Insight on Arctic Ice

Sisimiut, Greenland, science teacher Mette Noort Hansen

I teach introductory science, arctic technology, geography and biology to high school students in Sisimiut, Greenland, where I moved to from Denmark in July 2012. I have a M.Sc. in biology and geography and am interested in nature and the environment, both professionally as a teacher and personally in the form of hiking, skiing, botanizing or other activities.

I heard about the possibility of joining the IceBridge mission through a science newsletter for high school teachers in Greenland, and from my colleague Sine, who joined the mission in 2012. I hope that the mission will give me and future students an insight in contemporary research regarding the melting of polar ice, and a better understanding of what the research tells us, compared to what the media tells us.

Following IceBridge I will develop a theme for introductory science, regarding glaciers, the research done in IceBridge, and the definition of science. The product is made available for all science teachers in Greenland in June 2013, as part of a larger web-based teaching-platform for Greenlandic high school teachers.

Teacher and Science Adviser to Experience IceBridge

Danish science teacher Jette Rygaard Poulsen

Jette Rygaard Poulsen is the science adviser for the Danish Ministry of Education, and in this role she is participating in developing new subjects for the Danish high schools. One of the latest examples is the combination of physics and geography where a special focus on the Artic areas could be extremely relevant. Poulsen is working on how Operation IceBridge can contribute. Not only with raw data from measurements, but also with general information on the flying laboratory and the equipment usage. This insight can be coupled directly to the mathematical models the Danish students are already using during their education. Poulsen is also the coordinator of Danish teachers participation in Operation IceBridge.

Apart from her advisory work for the Ministry, Poulsen is also teaching physics and math at the general high school Hasseris Gymnasium in Aalborg, Denmark. Poulsen graduated from Copenhagen University as M.Sc in Meteorology, and has since maintained a special interest in the Arctic climate.

IceBridge Field Work - A Project Manager's Perspective

Field work in the Arctic is a unique and challenging experience. It takes an experienced and tough team to complete mission objectives from start to finish despite the biting cold, long days and noisy environment. Early morning temperatures are often in the negative single digits, and the IceBridge team powers through it preparing for flight each day. A typical day’s work can range 12 to 14 hours, a schedule that is repeated daily until the airport is closed or until the flight crew reaches a required hard down day.
My project management perspective allows me to take a step back and appreciate not only the technical expertise of our instrument and flight crew teams, but the masterful choreography that unwinds each day to ensure the P-3B aircraft is prepped and ready, the instruments are powered on and in working condition, and the weather and corresponding science flight plan has been assessed and defined. Being actively involved in all phases of Operation IceBridge makes for a stronger and well-versed leader better able to assist any part of the team at any time. By doing this, I can ensure we are on track to meet our mission and science requirements, assist with troubleshooting in and out of the field, better manage project milestones, and ensure streamlined communication across all IceBridge disciplines with a common goal. 

IceBridge project manager Christy Hansen on the stairway to NASA's P-3B. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

But why do we do this? How do we do this? 

We do all of this in the name of science, collecting polar geophysical data that will help characterize the health of the Arctic and Antarctic. The in-field data and derived data products IceBridge produces are helping to show annual changes in the ice. These data can be entered into models that can more accurately predict what might happen in the future in terms of ice sheet, glacier, and sea ice dynamics, and ultimately sea level rise; all of which have serious consequences for climate change. 

But how do we reach these science goals? The steps and teamwork required are simply astounding. Each part of our team is like a puzzle piece and everyone is needed to complete the puzzle. All teams must clearly know their individual responsibilities, but also be able to work together and mesh where their job ends and another begins. 

The choreography starts in the beginning, or planning phase where the science team establishes targets of interest on the ice in accordance with our level 1 science requirements. Then our flight planner designs survey flights, having a unique ability to efficiently mesh the science targets with the range and flight dynamic capabilities of the P-3B aircraft. 

Next the aircraft office at NASA's Wallop’s Flight Facility prepares the P-3B for deployment to some of the harshest environments on Earth and supplies the flight crew that executes the specific flight paths over our required science targets. The instrument teams provide the instrumentation—laser altimeters, radars, cameras and a gravimeter and magnetometer—and expertise in operating equipment and processing data during and after flights. Our logistics team deploys to the field ahead of time, establishing security clearances, local transportation and accommodations, and internet and airport utilities. 


Finally, our data center ingests and stores the data that our team collects, ensuring it's useable and available to the wider community. Our data is not only used by polar scientists and other researchers around the world, it is also used to help satellite missions like the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 and NASA's ICESat-2 calibrate and validate satellite instrumentation.

A view of ice from NASA's P-3B airborne laboratory. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

And finally, a day in the field …

Assuming a standard 8 a.m. local takeoff and eight hour mission duration, we generally have three major groups who follow different schedules pre-flight each morning.

The P-3 maintenance and flight engineer crew typically starts the earliest, heading to the airport about three hours before takeoff. They prep and warm up the plane, conduct some tests and fuel it, all in preparation for the instrument team arrivals and flight operations.

In parallel with aircraft prep, IceBridge's project scientist, project manager and flight planner team head to the weather office. The team works with local meteorologists, reviewing satellite imagery and weather models to determine the optimal weather patterns that support our flight requirements—clear below 1500 feet, the altitude we typically fly—and final target selection.

In the meantime, the instrument teams arrive at the aircraft to power up and check their systems prior to takeoff. By 7:30 a.m., the aircraft doors close, and we take off by 8. Our eight-hour flights range between flying high and fast, to low and slow over our targets, which include geophysical scans of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice.


We typically land around 4 p.m., close out the plane, check data and meet at 5:30 for a science meeting. Many folks continue to work for a few hours afterward, processing data or writing mission reports. All of this is repeated daily, for up to 6 days in a row, which can be exhausting, but in the name of important scientific research, an amazing team, and majestic polar landscapes, I could not imagine anything else.

Live Twitter chat with Operation IceBridge

Have you ever wondered what it's like to fly over the Arctic while doing scientific research? On April 8, you can follow NASA's Operation IceBridge and ask questions about how polar researchers work and the science of polar ice as NASA's P-3B airborne laboratory flies 1500 feet above Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers.


IceBridge will post live in-flight highlights on Twitter @NASA_ICE from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT on Monday, April 8 (weather delay date April 9). Follow along during the flight and hear from the scientists, engineers and guest high school science teachers onboard. We'll also be taking your questions. Just use the hashtag #askNASA.

Rock, Ice and Fire: Volcanoes of Greenland's Past

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

During one of IceBridge's online educational chats we had an interesting question from a fifth grade class in Hanover, N.H. "Are you flying near any volcanoes?" Nearby Iceland is famed for its geothermal activity, with hot springs and geysers, and volcanoes like the one that disrupted European air travel for weeks in 2010 (and caused minor concern for IceBridge mission planners at the same time) by spewing a large cloud of ash into the air.

Satellite image of the ash plume from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano on Apr. 17, 2010. Credit: NASA / MODIS Rapid Response Team

But unlike Antarctica, which has dozens of active and extinct volcanoes, Greenland is not known for having volcanic activity. Getting a handle on Greenland's geology is hampered by the fact that the majority of the island is covered with hundreds or thousands of meters of ice. But geologists in the field who have studied the exposed rock along the coasts and on mountains above the ice found evidence of volcanoes in Greenland's past.

About half of Greenland's exposed surface is made up of rock ranging between 1.5 billion and just over 3 billion years old, making them some of the oldest on Earth. This rock is part of a large formation that spans from Greenland, through the Canadian Shield down to the Hudson Bay. The majority of Greenland's bedrock is thought to be made up of this ancient rock, with portions of it bent and folded by motion of Earth's tectonic plates much like how the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States and the Rockies out west were formed.

Flight path for Apr. 11 survey of Greenland's Geikie Peninsula. Credit: NASA

Evidence of past volcanic activity can be seen in sediments carried by Greenland's glaciers and in one of the most visually striking geologic features in Greenland, the Geikie Peninsula on Greenland's east coast. And it turns out that this region's characteristic geology has something in common with present-day volcanic activity in Iceland. Both come from molten rock welling up through a ridge in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, a boundary where the North American and Eurasian plates are moving apart.

About 60 million years ago, lava from the mid-ocean ridge flooded out over the landscape, creating a rock formation known as a flood basalt. Repeated floods of lava over the years are what give Geikie's jagged peaks their distinctive layer cake appearance. Similar geologic structures can be seen in other parts of the world, like the Columbia River Basalt Group in the western United States.

A glacier between mountains on Greenland's Geikie Peninsula. The mountains on the Geikie Peninsula in Greenland consist mostly of flood basalts formed during the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean millions of years ago. Credit: NASA / Michael Studinger

The answer for those students was no, we weren't flying near any volcanoes. But we did get to relate our previous experience with the Iceland volcano (and learn that their teacher had a flight delayed because of the same event), and tell them about volcanoes in Greenland's past.

Grounded in Truth

Measuring polar ice from the air calls for the kind of precision flying made possible by GPS, but the usefulness of those satellites doesn't end there. GPS information like latitude, longitude and altitude make up a crucial part of IceBridge's instrument data, showing where each data point was collected, and ground-based GPS gives researchers a benchmark useful for checking instrument accuracy.
One of IceBridge's instruments, the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM), uses a laser altimeter to build what is essentially a topographic map of the surface. On each flight IceBridge will pass over the airport's ramp to make sure that the laser altimeter, or LiDAR, is properly calibrated. Because the airport ramps are large, flat and obstruction free areas of known elevation they act as a sort of Rosetta stone, giving the ATM team something to compare their elevation measurements against.

Vehicle equipped with a GPS antenna (on roof) before a ground survey of the ramp at Thule Air Base, Greenland. Credit: NASA / Michael Studinger

Having up-to-date elevation data for the entire ramp is the key to these ramp passes. And although IceBridge is an airborne mission this data is collected on the ground by a GPS antenna-equipped car. By driving this car in a grid pattern over the entire ramp and processing the GPS data in specialized software researchers are able to build an elevation map for the entire ramp. This map gives something researchers can use to check instrument readings, and it also reveals something that many people may not expect.

Airport ramps may appear perfectly level and unchanging, but reality is different. First, the elevation of a ramp varies somewhat from one end to the other. "There is a relief of about 3 or 4 meters across the ramp," said John Sonntag, ATM senior scientist. This relief gives an added benefit though because the slope gives more data to use for calibration. "If the survey shows a tilt of x degrees and the LiDAR shows a tilt of x plus 1, you know you need to make an adjustment," Sonntag said.      

Elevation map from a ground survey of the Kangerlussuaq airport ramp. Credit: NASA / ATM team

In addition to sloping, the ramps in Thule and Kangerlussuaq are changing slightly in elevation over time. Obviously any construction or repaving would change elevation slightly, but even the ground itself is rising. Although solid, Greenland's bedrock has been pushed down and deformed over the years by the weight of the ice sheet. As Greenland's ice sheet loses mass this downward force lessens and the bedrock starts rising—a process known as isostatic rebound. "In Thule, we're seeing a rise of about two centimeters per year," said Sonntag.

Two centimeters may not seem like much, but even that small of a change could affect instrument accuracy. To avoid this IceBridge does ground surveys of the ramps every year or two. Thanks to these regular surveys and continual checking of instrument calibration IceBridge researchers are able to provide the scientific community with accurate measurements of changing polar ice.

CubeSat Launch Tests Satellite Innovations

A series of tiny satellites equipped with an array of sensors will take a jarring ride above the California desert on a small rocket June 15 and tell designers whether they are on track to launch into orbit next year.

Built by several different organizations, including a university, a NASA field center and a high school, the spacecraft are 4-inch cubes designed to fly on their own eventually, but will remain firmly attached to the rocket during the upcoming mission. Each of the CubeSats, as they are called, is focused on a specific experiment related to spaceflight.

Success at this point could clear the way for more such spacecraft missions that scientists say could have a big impact on how satellites are designed in the future and what kind of stresses they actually face during the climb into space. 

The flight also is being watched closely as a model for trying out new or off-the-shelf technologies quickly before putting them in the pipeline for use on NASA's largest launchers.

"Overall it's a very exciting mission because we're looking at new things, developing new things that are going to benefit us in the future," said Garrett Skrobot, project manager for the effort under NASA's Launch Services Program. "We can test the environments, and then we know when we put it onto a flight system, we have confidence the system's going to work confidently."

The rocket will carry four CubeSats and conduct a test of a lightweight, nano-launcher and carrier. 

The new launcher weighs one-third as much as the standard rack that held three CubeSats. With the same size and capacity as the previous design known as a poly-picosat orbital deployer or P-POD, the lower-weight carrier and launcher will give satellite designers about two more pounds to work with.

"An extra two pounds for a nanosatellite is huge," said Roland Coelho, program lead at CalPoly, the California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo. The extra allowance provides designers significantly more versatility in their designs and widens the CubeSat's abilities. 

For this mission, the prototype carrier will hold CubeSats loaded with instruments that will measure vibration, heat and other conditions. Those readings will be used to find out whether the lightweight carrier is as strong as the previous model.

"We've had the P-POD design for over a decade and we have a lot of lessons-learned," Coelho said. "In this instance we could design something from scratch and see how it works."

Engineers at Kennedy working through Rocket University designed and built a CubeSat called RUBICS-1 that will test a low-cost avionics system Garvey could use on its rocket for future launches. The RUBICS-1, which is short for Rocket University Broad Initiatives CubeSat, is one of the measurement satellites that will ride in the new, lightweight carrier.

The structure and components of the satellite, are built modularly, so a cube can be adapted easily to specific missions. 

The RUBICS-1 includes, for example, a GPS, radio unit and antenna, plus a small suite of sensors.

Designing and building a functioning spacecraft that can power itself, communicate with ground stations on Earth and still collect useful information while keeping to the strict 4-inch requirement is a great challenge to satellite designers and teaches them how to adapt, the CubeSat managers said.

"We're seeing big satellites and now we're seeing guys drive down the size," Skrobot said. "They think about all the different ways they can get smaller and smaller to fit in that cube. We're a 4-inch cube and you're trying to get power, instrument and all that stuff into that package, they get very creative. It's fascinating what they come up with."

There also are high hopes for the rocket itself, which was designed with CubeSats in mind. Built by Long Beach, Calif.-based Garvey Spacecraft Corp., the Prospector-18 rocket, as it's called, flew several test flights starting in 2011 and completed a successful operational mission in December 2012. It is powered by a single engine burning liquid oxygen and ethanol.

The flight will take the satellites between 15,000 and 20,000 feet into the air before a parachute releases, and the launch vehicle and its payloads float back to Earth. 

Skrobot said his excitement is no less than it would be for a mission to another world.

"I'm excited about all launches," he said. "This is no different, even though we're only going to 15,000 feet. We're launching a vehicle, we're educating young engineers, and they get to see the fruits of their efforts as well."

Though short, the mission is expected to show engineers exactly how much vibration, heat and other conditions to expect on future launches.

"It's a testbed to launch in a launch-like environment," said Shaun Daly, the lead mentor for the StangSat, which is the cube designed and assembled by high school students. "It should be a harsher shock environment than what we will have on a launch."

One of the CubeSats, called PhoneSat, was built by engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. As its name implies, the satellite is made from a smartphone to utilize the sophisticated features and high-powered memory and power systems, not to mention the phone's camera.

A PhoneSat recently flew into space on an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket that was making a test flight. Since that mission, designers made a couple changes to the satellite and now can test the effects before placing another model in orbit.

"The smartphone today has more power than a desktop computer did five years ago. You can leverage that into a system that can do meaningful science in space for a fraction of the cost of a large satellite," said Scott Higginbotham, a veteran of space shuttle era processing. 

The changes and testing highlight the main advantage of being a primary payload on a small rocket rather than a secondary payload on a huge rocket: engineers can make changes and experiment with them in much shorter time.

Higginbotham also is the project manager for another of the CubeSats, this one built by CalPoly, the California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo.

The PolySat spacecraft will work in conjunction with the StangSat to gather and record data from inside the rocket during the flight. Housed inside a container designed specifically for the CubeSats, the PolySat and StangSat will transmit information between each other over a Wi-Fi network, a first for CubeSats. 

About a month before heading to California's Mojave desert for the launch, Daly and the high school students who had been working on StangSat tested their systems with the PolySat. Sitting on a bench in a lab at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the two satellites were put through startup sequences, communication patterns and other tests. 

It was a final exam of sorts for the satellites and the builders before the mission.

"We've been coasts apart, we've been sharing information, but you're operating in a bubble on that kind of stuff," Daly said. "Both systems have to get a sense that there's a launch and they have to wake up. For us, we turn on very quickly but we can't send them anything until we have a Wi-Fi network established. You have to prevent yourself from burning through your battery." 

The hope is that a successful test of the ability will allow future CubeSat networks to gather data and send it to a specialized, central cube that will downlink data to the ground.

With that promise still on the horizon, researchers say there will be near-term tangible benefits for this flight.

"The first benefit that we get is an actual flight data collection experiment," Higginbotham said. "We have an interest in understanding what the true environment is so we can perhaps relax some of the criteria for design on our spacecraft so that might let them do more things."

This flight will not spell the end of the mission for the satellites. The PolySat is to be refurbished and a new StangSat will be built to fly together into orbit in 2014 as a secondary payload on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. Riding together into space, the satellites will be ejected into space soon after launch to put their data collection and recording system to their highest test. 

"If we're fortunate and the future holds like we think it will, there will be many, many more in the years to come," Higginbotham said. "It would not surprise me to see 100 to 150 a year launched in the not too distant future."

Designers say the tests can show new ways to improve satellite designs of all sizes from then on.

"From a technical perspective, you can move down a magnitude to build a satellite and test a satellite," Daly said. "You can drastically reduce the cost of testing and developing a satellite." 

Students ‘Dig Deep’ in Mining Competition

Overcoming challenges, displaying teamwork and sharing team spirit were all part of NASA’s Fourth Annual Robotic Mining Competition, coordinated by Kennedy Space Center’s Education Office and held May 20-24 at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. 

Fifty college and university teams from the U.S., Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, India, Mexico and Poland brought their unique robotic miners to the visitor complex. During four days of intense competition, the teams placed their robots in the mining arena to dig in the rocky terrain of simulated extraterrestrial regolith and deposit at least the minimum amount of 10 kilograms in the hopper. 

Teams also prepared and presented a systems engineering paper and slide presentation, demonstrated their robotic miners to a panel of judges, displayed team spirit, performed outreach education projects and worked to display efficient use of communications power during robotic operations. 

When the “dust” settled May 24, several teams were recognized at the awards ceremony held in one of the visitor complex's IMAX theaters. 

The grand prize, the Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence, was awarded to Iowa State University Team LunaCY for accumulating the most points during the competition. The team also received the First Place On-Site Mining Award for collecting the most regolith. 

“We weren’t sure how it was going to work out,” said Katie Goebel, the project director. “It was amazing and very nice that our hard work as a team paid off like we wanted it to.” 

Iowa State has competed in all four mining competitions and has about 30 team members. 

“It was another successful competition,” said Rob Mueller, lead technical expert and mining judge. “We appreciate all of their efforts. We learn from their efforts. We saw a new level of friendship here this year.” 

Teamwork and team spirit were especially evident when first-time competitors Team HUSAR from the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland arrived, but only half of their robot arrived. With a “Failure is not an option” banner displayed on the wall above their “pit” area, they rose to the challenge. 

“We had to build a new robot,” said team leader Lukasz Godziejewski. “Other teams helped out by donating parts and tools.” 

They persevered and were able to compete in the mining area on the final day of competition. For their efforts they received a special recognition, the Perseverance Award. 

Team EKUSH from the Military Institute of Science and Technology in Bangladesh received first place in the Luna Worldwide Campaign and the Outreach Project categories. Team ROBOCOL from the Universidad de Los Andes in Columbia received first place in the Best Use of Social Media category. 

Another first-time team, KU Moonabotics, from the University Institute of Engineering and Technology at Kurukshetra University in India, needed help rebuilding an electronics package because their original was lost in transit. Devon Peck, from the Florida Institute of Technology’s Team Persistence, stepped forward to help them out. This helped earn FIT the top Team Spirit Award. 

West Virginia University’s team Mountaineers received second place in the Joe Kosmo Award of Excellence. In their third year of competition, the team met the challenge of building two robots, one for this competition and another for the RASC-AL competition coming up in Houston. 

“The challenge was to start early enough so we weren’t rushed at the end,” said Tim Godisart, team leader. “It takes about eight months from design to build complete. We had two teams working almost simultaneously.” 

“It was fun. Every year gets more interesting,” said Justin Headley, a systems engineer from the University of Alabama’s team LUnAH. In their fourth year of competition, the team received third place in the Joe Kosmo Award of Excellence. 

No stranger to the competition, the University of North Dakota’s Team RAPTOR placed second in the On-Site Mining category. The university won the Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence in 2011 and has competed all four years. This year they were able to collect nearly 200 kilograms of regolith during two separate runs in the mining arena. 

Team LunarEX from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, developed a novel locomotion system that features active suspension, independent steering and 3D-printed wheels that adjusted traction as the robot mined the regolith. 

“One of the challenges we had this year was failure of the electrical components, but we were able to successfully replace them so we could compete,” said Nick Speal, the project leader. 

“It’s been really exciting to be here, compete for the first time and see the other teams’ robots,” said Daniel Linton, the University of Sydney, Australia team leader. 

“It was a labor of love, and even with the challenges, we were able to have an exciting and inspiring competition,” said Gloria Murphy, mining competition project manager. “Reading about the teams and their dedication to this competition energized me and all of the event coordinators and volunteers.” 

“I hope you learned what inspires you and what challenges you,” said Kennedy Center Director Bob Cabana during the awards ceremony. “It’s our destiny to go beyond Earth. We are explorers.” 

The competition garnered interest from government representatives. Patrick Gavin from U.S. Rep. Bill Posey’s office and Susan Fernandez from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s office toured the competition area and viewed the robotic miners in action.

NASA's Hubble Uncovers Evidence of Farthest Planet Forming From its Star

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found compelling evidence of a planet forming 7.5 billion miles away from its star, a finding that may challenge current theories about planet formation.

Of the almost 900 planets outside our solar system that have been confirmed to date, this is the first to be found at such a great distance from its star. The suspected planet is orbiting the diminutive red dwarf TW Hydrae, a popular astronomy target located 176 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Hydra the Sea Serpent.

This graphic shows a gap in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas whirling around the nearby red dwarf star TW Hydrae, which resides 176 light-years away in the constellation Hydra, sometimes called the Sea Serpent. The gap's presence is best explained as due to the effects of a growing, unseen planet that is gravitationally sweeping up material and carving out a lane in the disk, like a snow plow. In the left image, astronomers used a masking device on the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer to block out the star's bright light so that the disk's structure could be seen. The Hubble observations reveal that the gap, which is 1.9 billion miles wide, is not completely cleared out. The illustration at right shows the gap relative to the star. The Hubble observations were taken on June 17, 2005.

Hubble's keen vision detected a mysterious gap in a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust swirling around TW Hydrae. The gap is 1.9 billion miles wide and the disk is 41 billion miles wide. The gap's presence likely was caused by a growing, unseen planet that is gravitationally sweeping up material and carving out a lane in the disk, like a snow plow. 

The planet is estimated to be relatively small, at 6 to 28 times more massive than Earth. Its wide orbit means it is moving slowly around its host star. If the suspected planet were orbiting in our solar system, it would be roughly twice Pluto's distance from the sun.

Planets are thought to form over tens of millions of years. The buildup is slow, but persistent as a budding planet picks up dust, rocks, and gas from the protoplanetary disk. A planet 7.5 billion miles from its star should take more than 200 times longer to form than Jupiter did at its distance from the sun because of its much slower orbital speed and the deficiency of material in the disk. Jupiter is 500 million miles from the sun and it formed in about 10 million years.

TW Hydrae is only 8 million years old, making it an unlikely star to host a planet, according to this theory. There has not been enough time for a planet to grow through the slow accumulation of smaller debris. Complicating the story further is that TW Hydrae is only 55 percent as massive as our sun. 

"It's so intriguing to see a system like this," said John Debes of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. Debes leads a research team that identified the gap. "This is the lowest-mass star for which we've observed a gap so far out."

An alternative planet-formation theory suggests that a piece of the disk becomes gravitationally unstable and collapses on itself. In this scenario, a planet could form more quickly, in just a few thousand years. 

"If we can actually confirm that there's a planet there, we can connect its characteristics to measurements of the gap properties," Debes said. "That might add to planet formation theories as to how you can actually form a planet very far out."

The TW Hydrae disk also lacks large dust grains in its outer regions. Observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile show dust grains roughly the size of a grain of sand are not present beyond about 5.5 billion miles from the star, just short of the gap. 

"Typically, you need pebbles before you can have a planet. So, if there is a planet and there is no dust larger than a grain of sand farther out, that would be a huge challenge to traditional planet formation models," Debes said.


The team used Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) to observe the star in near-infrared light. The researchers then compared the NICMOS images with archival Hubble data and optical and spectroscopic observations from Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). Debes said researchers see the gap at all wavelengths, which indicates it is a structural feature and not an illusion caused by the instruments or scattered light.

Shining a Light on Cool Pools of Gas in the Galaxy

Newly formed stars shine brightly, practically crying out, "Hey, look at me!" But not everything in our Milky Way galaxy is easy to see. The bulk of material between the stars in the galaxy -- the cool hydrogen gas from which stars spring -- is nearly impossible to find.

A new study from the Hershel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation, is shining a light on these hidden pools of gas, revealing their whereabouts and quantities. In the same way that dyes are used to visualize swirling motions of transparent fluids, the Herschel team has used a new tracer to map the invisible hydrogen gas.

The discovery reveals that the reservoir of raw material for making stars had been underestimated before -- almost by one third -- and extends farther out from our galaxy's center than known before.

"There is an enormous additional reservoir of material available to form new stars that we couldn't identify before," said Jorge Pineda of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of a new paper on the findings published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"We had to go to space to solve this mystery because our atmosphere absorbs the specific radiation we wanted to detect," said William Langer of JPL, principal investigator of the Herschel project to map the gas. "We also needed to see far-infrared light to pinpoint the location of the gas. For both these reasons, Herschel was the only telescope for the job."

Stars are created from clouds of gas, made of hydrogen molecules. The first step in making a star is to squeeze gas together enough that atoms fuse into molecules. The gas starts out sparse but, through the pull of gravity and sometimes other constricting forces, it collects and becomes denser. When the hydrogen gets dense enough, nuclear fusion takes place and a star is born, shining with starlight.

Astronomers studying stars want to follow this journey, from a star's humble beginnings as a cloud of molecules to a full-blown blazing orb. To do so requires mapping the distribution of the stellar hydrogen fuel across the galaxy. Unfortunately, most hydrogen molecules in space are too cold to give off any visible light. They lurk unseen by most telescopes.

For decades, researchers have turned to a tracer molecule called carbon monoxide, which goes hand-in-hand with the hydrogen molecules, revealing their location. But this method has limitations. In regions where the gas is just beginning to pool -- the earliest stage of cloud formation -- there is no carbon monoxide.

"Ultraviolet light destroys the carbon monoxide," said Langer. "In the space between stars, where the gas is very thin, there is not enough dust to shield molecules from destruction by ultraviolet light."

A different tracer -- ionized carbon - does, however, linger in these large but relatively empty spaces, and can be used to pin down the hydrogen molecules. Researchers have observed ionized carbon from space before, but Herschel has, for the first time, provided a dramatically improved geographic map of its location and abundance in the galaxy.

"Thanks to Herschel's incredible sensitivity, we can separate material moving at different speeds," said Paul Goldsmith, a co-author and the NASA Herschel Project Scientist at JPL. "We finally can get the whole picture of what's available to make future generations of stars."

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

NASA's Webb Telescope's Last Backbone Component Completed

WASHINGTON -- Assembly of the backbone of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the primary mirror backplane support structure, is a step closer to completion with the recent addition of the backplane support frame, a fixture that will be used to connect all the pieces of the telescope together. 

The backplane support frame will bring together Webb's center section and wings, secondary mirror support structure, aft optics system and integrated science instrument module. ATK of Magna, Utah, finished fabrication under the direction of the observatory's builder, Northrop Grumman Corp. 

The backplane support frame also will keep the light path aligned inside the telescope during science observations. Measuring 11.5 feet by 9.1 feet by 23.6 feet and weighing 1,102 pounds, it is the final segment needed to complete the primary mirror backplane support structure. This structure will support the observatory's weight during its launch from Earth and hold its18-piece, 21-foot-diameter primary mirror nearly motionless while Webb peers into deep space. 

ATK has begun final integration of the backplane support frame to the backplane center section, which it completed in April 2012 and two backplane wing assemblies, which it completed in March. 

"Fabricating and assembling the backplane support frame of this size and stability is a significant technological step as it is one of the largest cryogenic composite structures ever built," said Lee Feinberg, James Webb Space Telescope optical telescope element manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. 

The frame, which was built at room temperature but must operate at temperatures ranging from minus 406 degrees to minus 343 degrees Fahrenheit, will undergo extremely cold, or cryogenic, thermal testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The backplane support frame and primary mirror backplane support structure will shrink as they cool down in space. The tests, exceeding the low temperatures the telescope's backbone will experience in space, are to verify the components will be the right size and operate correctly in space. 

The primary mirror backplane support structure consists of more than 10,000 parts, all designed, engineered and built by ATK. The support structure will measure about 24 feet tall, 19.5 feet wide and more than 11 feet deep when fully deployed, but weigh only 2,138 pounds with the wing assemblies, center section and backplane support frame attached. When the mission payload and instruments are installed, the fully populated support structure will support more than 7,300 pounds, more than three times its own weight. 

The primary mirror backplane support structure also will meet unprecedented thermal stability requirements to minimize heat distortion. While the telescope is operating at a range of extremely cold temperatures, from minus 406 degrees to minus 343 degrees Fahrenheit, the backplane must not vary more than 38 nanometers (approximately 1 one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair). 

The primary backplane support structure is made of lightweight graphite materials using and advanced fabrication techniques. The composite parts are connected with precision metallic fittings made of invar and titanium. 

"The ATK team is providing program hardware that is arguably the largest and most advanced cryogenic structure ever built," said Bob Hellekson, ATK's Webb telescope program manager. 

The assembled primary backplane support structure and backplane support frame are scheduled for delivery to Marshall later this year for the extreme cryogenic thermal testing. They will undergo structural static testing at Northrop Grumman's facilities in Redondo Beach, Calif. in early 2014, and then be combined with the wing assemblies. 

The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. It will observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies formed and see unexplored planets around distant stars. The Webb telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. 

Black Hole Naps Amidst Stellar Chaos

Nearly a decade ago, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory caught signs of what appeared to be a black hole snacking on gas at the middle of the nearby Sculptor galaxy. Now, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which sees higher-energy X-ray light, has taken a peek and found the black hole asleep.

"Our results imply that the black hole went dormant in the past 10 years," said Bret Lehmer of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "Periodic observations with both Chandra and NuSTAR should tell us unambiguously if the black hole wakes up again. If this happens in the next few years, we hope to be watching." Lehmer is lead author of a new study detailing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The slumbering black hole is about 5 million times the mass of our sun. It lies at the center of the Sculptor galaxy, also known as NGC 253, a so-called starburst galaxy actively giving birth to new stars. At 13 million light-years away, this is one of the closest starbursts to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is all around more quiet than the Sculptor galaxy. It makes far fewer new stars, and its behemoth black hole, about 4 million times the mass of our sun, is also snoozing.

"Black holes feed off surrounding accretion disks of material. When they run out of this fuel, they go dormant," said co-author Ann Hornschemeier of Goddard. "NGC 253 is somewhat unusual because the giant black hole is asleep in the midst of tremendous star-forming activity all around it."

The findings are teaching astronomers how galaxies grow over time. Nearly all galaxies are suspected to harbor supermassive black holes at their hearts. In the most massive of these, the black holes are thought to grow at the same rate that new stars form, until blasting radiation from the black holes ultimately shuts down star formation. In the case of the Sculptor galaxy, astronomers do not know if star formation is winding down or ramping up.

"Black hole growth and star formation often go hand-in-hand in distant galaxies," said Daniel Stern, a co-author and NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's a bit surprising as to what's going on here, but we've got two powerful complementary X-ray telescopes on the case."

Chandra first observed signs of what appeared to be a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of the Sculptor galaxy in 2003. As material spirals into a black hole, it heats up to tens of millions of degrees and glows in X-ray light that telescopes like Chandra and NuSTAR can see.

Then, in September and November of 2012, Chandra and NuSTAR observed the same region simultaneously. The NuSTAR observations -- the first-ever to detect focused, high-energy X-ray light from the region -- allowed the researchers to say conclusively that the black hole is not accreting material. NuSTAR launched into space in June of 2012.

In other words, the black hole seems to have fallen asleep. Another possibility is that the black hole was not actually awake 10 years ago, and Chandra observed a different source of X-rays. Future observations with both telescopes may solve the puzzle.

"The combination of coordinated Chandra and NuSTAR observations is extremely powerful for answering questions like this," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, we can get all sides of the story."

The observations also revealed a smaller, flaring object that the researchers were able to identify as an "ultraluminous X-ray source," or ULX. ULXs are black holes feeding off material from a partner star. They shine more brightly than typical stellar-mass black holes generated from dying stars, but are fainter and more randomly distributed than the supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies. Astronomers are still working to understand the size, origins and physics of ULXs.

"These stellar-mass black holes are bumping along near the center of this galaxy," said Hornschemeier. "They tend to be more numerous in areas where there is more star-formation activity."

If and when the Sculptor's slumbering giant does wake up in the next few years amidst all the commotion, NuSTAR and Chandra will monitor the situation. The team plans to check back on the system periodically.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif., and with support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Science Data Center.

NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.