[Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov/index.html

Thu Oct 15 05:26:37 CDT 2015

Good morning all,
  I had such a wonderful time at Keene’s Crossing Elementary School on Monday, speaking with 3rd, 4th, & 5th graders. It was a little different as I stayed at one school the whole day. In the morning I did two presentations to all the kids, then spent the rest of the day in classrooms with individual grades. Also managed lunch with the kids and it all went so very well…the kids were great and I especially want to thank my two young friends, Casey and Emma, who were assigned to escort me, keep me on schedule, and as I mentioned to them…keep me out of trouble :-). I want to thank Kathie, who arranged all of this, who has been a friend since I met her at a different school years ago. And to all the teachers who allowed me to share time in their classrooms when they had lessons plans they should have been following. I also want to let all the schools and teachers know how much I appreciate all they do to support the visits…I know it takes allot of scheduling and changing of a routine to have someone come in for the day as trying to schedule around lunches, required classes, and getting administrative support because you don’t have the authority to make  the decisions you need makes it very difficult and often a very time consuming process for the teachers….although the feedback has been great from the teachers and the kids really seem to enjoy it too…tomorrow I will be going to Port Malabar Elementary to participate in Brevard After School Program which I am sure will be fun and next week I will be at schools on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday…it has been kind of crazy trying to schedule everything as my main objective is to always speak with as many kids as possible…but really d enjoy the smaller groups where I can speak with the kids individually...wishing you all a wonderful day…we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the present, make each day special, let those we care about most know, smile & have fun…gabe

Coronal Hole Front and Center
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/coronalhole2.jpg>
The dark area across the top of the sun in this image is a coronal hole, a region on the sun where the magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, sending coronal material speeding out in what is called a high-speed solar wind stream. The high-speed solar wind originating from this coronal hole, imaged here on Oct. 10, 2015, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, created a geomagnetic storm near Earth that resulted in several nights of auroras. This image was taken in wavelengths of 193 Angstroms, which is invisible to our eyes and is typically colorized in bronze.

Fast Solar Wind Causes Aurora Light Shows
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On the night of Oct. 8, 2015, a photographer in Harstad, Norway captured this image of the dancing northern lights. Auroras are created when fast-moving, magnetic solar material strikes Earth’s magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere. This collision rattles the magnetosphere in an event called a geomagnetic storm, sending trapped charged particles zooming down magnetic field lines towards the atmosphere, where they collide brilliantly with molecules in the air, creating auroras.

Though many geomagnetic storms are associated with clouds of solar material that explode from the sun in an event called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, this storm was caused by an especially fast stream of solar wind.

“Geomagnetic storms caused by high-speed solar wind streams aren’t uncommon,” said Leila Mays, a space physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Near solar minimum—when solar activity like CMEs are less frequent—these fast streams are actually the most common cause of geomagnetic storms that create auroras.”

Cassini Begins Series of Flybys with Close-up of Saturn Moon Enceladus

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Earlier in Cassini's mission at Saturn, northern terrains on the ocean-bearing icy moon Enceladus were in the shadow of winter.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft will wrap up its time <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4525> in the region of Saturn's large, icy moons with a series of three close encounters with Enceladus starting Wednesday, Oct. 14. Images are expected to begin arriving one to two days after the flyby, which will provide the first opportunity for a close-up look at the north polar region of Enceladus.

Wednesday’s flyby is considered a moderately close approach for Cassini, which will pass at an altitude of 1,142 miles (1,839 kilometers) above the moon's surface. Closest approach to Enceladus will occur at 6:41 a.m. EDT (3:41 a.m. PDT). The spacecraft’s final two approaches will take place in late October and mid-December.

During Cassini’s early-mission encounters with the moon, the northern terrain of Enceladus was masked by wintry darkness. Now that the summer sun is shining on the high northern latitudes, scientists will be looking for signs of ancient geological activity similar to the geyser-spouting, tiger-stripe fractures in the moon's south polar region. Features observed during the flyby could help them understand whether the north also was geologically active at some time in the past.

"We've been following a trail of clues on Enceladus for 10 years now," said Bonnie Buratti, a Cassini science team member and icy moons expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "The amount of activity on and beneath this moon's surface has been a huge surprise to us. We're still trying to figure out what its history has been, and how it came to be this way."

Since Cassini's 2005 discovery of continually-erupting fountains of icy material on Enceladus, the Saturn moon has become one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for present-day habitable environments. Mission scientists announced <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4507> evidence in March that hydrothermal activity may be occurring on the seafloor of the moon's underground ocean. In September they broke news <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4718> that its ocean -- previously thought to be only a regional sea -- was, in fact, global.

This animation shows NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its Oct. 14, 2015, flyby of Enceladus, which will focus on the Saturnian moon's northern polar region.
Credits: NASA
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"The global nature of Enceladus' ocean and the inference that hydrothermal systems might exist at the ocean's base strengthen the case that this small moon of Saturn may have environments similar to those at the bottom of our own ocean," said Jonathan Lunine, an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini mission at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "It is therefore very tempting to imagine that life could exist in such a habitable realm, a billion miles from our home."

The Oct. 14 encounter will serve as a prelude to the main event, a flyby of Enceladus on Wednesday, Oct. 28, during which Cassini will come dizzyingly close to the icy moon, passing a mere 30 miles (49 kilometers) above the moon's south polar region. During this encounter, Cassini will make its deepest-ever dive through the moon's plume of icy spray, collecting images and valuable data about what's going on beneath the frozen surface. Cassini scientists are hopeful data from that flyby will provide evidence of how much hydrothermal activity is occurring in the moon's ocean, and how the amount of activity impacts the habitability of Enceladus’ ocean.
Cassini's final close flyby on Dec. 19 will examine how much heat is coming from the moon's interior from an altitude of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometers).
An online toolkit for all three final Enceladus flybys is available at: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/finalflybys <http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/finalflybys>
Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004 and still has about two years left on its mission. Beginning in November, mission controllers will begin to slowly raise Cassini's orbit out of the space around the Saturn’s equator, where flybys of the large moons are more common. Coming up are a number of closest-ever brushes with the small moons that huddle near the planet's rings.
"We'll continue observing Enceladus and its remarkable activity for the remainder of our precious time at Saturn," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "But these three encounters will be our last chance to see this fascinating world up close for many years to come."
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information about Cassini, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini <http://www.nasa.gov/cassini> or http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov <http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/>
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