NASA DESCRIBES HOW TO MAKE A CELESTIAL SNOW ANGEL

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched "wings" of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the "wings" of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an "hourglass" shape."

NASA ANNOUNCES PROCUREMENT STRATEGY TO GET U.S. BACK INTO SPACE

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

November 15, 2011
“WASHINGTON -- NASA announced today a modified competitive procurement strategy to keep on track the agency’s plan to have U.S. companies transport American astronauts into space instead of outsourcing this work to foreign governments.

Instead of awarding contracts for the next phase of the Commercial Crew Program, the agency plans to use multiple, competitively awarded Space Act Agreements. Using competitive Space Act Agreements instead of contracts will allow NASA to maintain a larger number of partners during this phase of the program, with the flexibility to adjust technical direction, milestones and funding.

This flexibility is important during a period of high budget uncertainty when NASA is receiving less funding than President Obama requested for the agency’s commercial space program.

"NASA is committed to ensuring that U.S. companies are sending American astronauts into space," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "This new acquisition strategy will allow us to preserve competition as we maintain our momentum to provide a U.S.-based commercial crew launch capability at the earliest possible time."

This competitive Space Act solicitation is separate from the work being carried out under existing Space Act Agreements. The new competition will focus on an overall system design rather than single technology activities. Details on the new competition will be available in January.

The announcement for proposals is expected in the first quarter of 2012. These competitively awarded Space Acts will be followed by a competitively awarded contract for the certification phase. The certification phase will ensure that the designs fully meet the safety and performance requirements for NASA utilization.”

A FIRST IN SUPERNOVA OBSERVATIONS

The following is an excerpt from the NASA website:

"First Supernova Companion Star Found
In 2004, an international team of astronomers had, for the first time, observed a stellar "survivor" emerge from a double star system involving an exploded supernova.

Supernovae are some of the most significant sources of chemical elements in the universe, and they are at the heart of our understanding of the evolution of galaxies. In this artist's view, the red super-giant supernova progenitor star (left) is exploding after having transferred about 10 solar masses of hydrogen gas to the blue companion star (right).

Image Credit: NASA

NASA SAYS MINERAL VEIN FOUND ON MARS WAS DEPOSITED BY WATER

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"WASHINGTON -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.

"This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs."

The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco.

The vein examined most closely by Opportunity is about the width of a human thumb (0.4 to 0.8 inch), 16 to 20 inches long, and protrudes slightly higher than the bedrock on either side of it. Observations by the durable rover reveal this vein and others like it within an apron surrounding a segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater. None like it were seen in the 20 miles (33 kilometers) of crater-pocked plains that Opportunity explored for 90 months before it reached Endeavour, nor in the higher ground of the rim.

Last month, researchers used the Microscopic Imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the rover's arm and multiple filters of the Panoramic Camera on the rover's mast to examine the vein, which is informally named "Homestake." The spectrometer identified plentiful calcium and sulfur, in a ratio pointing to relatively pure calcium sulfate.

Calcium sulfate can exist in many forms, varying by how much water is bound into the minerals' crystalline structure. The multi-filter data from the camera suggest gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate. On Earth, gypsum is used for making drywall and plaster of Paris.

Observations from orbit have detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

"It is a mystery where the gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from," said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "At Homestake, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars."

The Homestake deposit, whether gypsum or another form of calcium sulfate, likely formed from water dissolving calcium out of volcanic rocks. The minerals combined with sulfur either leached from the rocks or introduced as volcanic gas, and was deposited as calcium sulfate into an underground fracture that later became exposed at the surface.

Throughout Opportunity's long traverse across Mars' Meridiani plain, the rover has driven over bedrock composed of magnesium, iron and calcium sulfate minerals that also indicate a wet environment billions of years ago. The highly concentrated calcium sulfate at Homestake could have been produced in conditions more neutral than the harshly acidic conditions indicated by the other sulfate deposits observed by Opportunity.

"It could have formed in a different type of water environment, one more hospitable for a larger variety of living organisms," Clark said.

Homestake and similar-looking veins appear in a zone where the sulfate-rich sedimentary bedrock of the plains meets older, volcanic bedrock exposed at the rim of Endeavour. That location may offer a clue about their origin.

"We want to understand why these veins are in the apron but not out on the plains," said the mission's deputy principal investigator, Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis. "The answer may be that rising groundwater coming from the ancient crust moved through material adjacent to Cape York and deposited gypsum, because this material would be relatively insoluble compared with either magnesium or iron sulfates."

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of extended missions and made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity continues exploring, currently heading to a sun-facing slope on the northern end of the Endeavour rim fragment called "Cape York" to keep its solar panels at a favorable angle during the mission's fifth Martian winter.

NASA launched the next-generation Mars rover, the car-sized Curiosity, on Nov. 26. It is slated for arrival at the planet's Gale Crater in August 2012.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington."

VOYAGER(V-GER IN STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE) IS NOW ON THE EDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge WASHINGTON -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field piles up and higher energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space.

"Voyager tells us now that we're in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back. We shouldn't have long to wait to find out what the space between stars is really like."

Although Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, it is not yet in interstellar space. In the latest data, the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed, indicating Voyager is still within the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. The data do not reveal exactly when Voyager 1 will make it past the edge of the solar atmosphere into interstellar space, but suggest it will be in a few months to a few years.

The latest findings, described today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco, come from Voyager's Low Energy Charged Particle instrument, Cosmic Ray Subsystem and Magnetometer.

Scientists previously reported the outward speed of the solar wind had diminished to zero in April 2010, marking the start of the new region. Mission managers rolled the spacecraft several times this spring and summer to help scientists discern whether the solar wind was blowing strongly in another direction. It was not. Voyager 1 is plying the celestial seas in a region similar to Earth's doldrums, where there is very little wind.

During this past year, Voyager's magnetometer also detected a doubling in the intensity of the magnetic field in the stagnation region. Like cars piling up at a clogged freeway off-ramp, the increased intensity of the magnetic field shows that inward pressure from interstellar space is compacting it.

Voyager has been measuring energetic particles that originate from inside and outside our solar system. Until mid-2010, the intensity of particles originating from inside our solar system had been holding steady. But during the past year, the intensity of these energetic particles has been declining, as though they are leaking out into interstellar space. The particles are now half as abundant as they were during the previous five years.

At the same time, Voyager has detected a 100-fold increase in the intensity of high-energy electrons from elsewhere in the galaxy diffusing into our solar system from outside, which is another indication of the approaching boundary.

"We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity," said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now."

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from the sun.

The Voyager spacecraft were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology."

SPACE FIRM TO TEST ENGINE AT NASA SITE

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"NASA Deputy Administrator Garver Tours Blue Origin; Announces Commercial Space Firm's April Engine Testing At NASA Stennis

WASHINGTON -- NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver is visiting Blue Origin in Kent, Wash., today. The company is one of NASA's commercial partners opening a new chapter in human exploration by developing innovative systems to reach low Earth orbit as part of the Commercial Crew Development Program.

"Blue Origin is creating cutting edge technologies to take us to low Earth orbit," Garver said. "Like all of our commercial partners, they're making real progress and opening up a new job-creating segment of the economy that will allow NASA to focus on our next big challenges -- missions to asteroids and Mars."

Garver also announced Blue Origin has delivered its BE-3 engine thrust chamber assembly -- the engine's combustion chamber and nozzle -- to NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where testing will begin in April 2012. The company is developing a reusable launch vehicle, designed to take off and land vertically, and an escape system for its crewed spacecraft. Testing will take place on the center's E-1 Test Stand.

"We're delighted Blue Origin is taking advantage of Stennis, a center with a long record of propulsion testing from the dawn of the Space Age, to test the rocket engines of the future," Garver said.

"We appreciate the opportunity to work with the depth of expertise and utilize the facilities at Stennis for our engine testing, and are glad to have the test hardware onsite and ready to go," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager at Blue Origin.

WANT TO BE AN ASTRONAUT? NASA IS NOW HIRING

The following is an excerpt from the NASA website:

“NASA Accepting Applications For Future Astronauts
HOUSTON -- Do you dream of flying in space? Now is your chance. NASA is accepting applications for the agency's next class for the Astronaut Candidate Program.

Starting today, qualified individuals can submit their applications through the federal government's USAJobs.gov website. Those selected will be among the first to pioneer a new generation of commercial launch vehicles and travel aboard a new heavy-lift rocket to distant destinations in deep space.

"For 50 years, American astronauts have led the exploration of our solar system," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Today we are getting a glimpse of why that will remain true for the next half-century. Make no mistake about it, human space flight is alive and well at NASA."

Qualifications include a bachelor's degree in engineering, science or math and three years of relevant professional experience. Successful applicants frequently have significant qualifications in engineering or science; or extensive experience flying high-performance jet aircraft. Educators teaching kindergarten through 12th grade with these minimimum degree requirements also are encouraged to apply.

NASA will accept applications through January 27, 2012. After applicant interviews and evaluations, the agency expects to announce the final selections in 2013. Training will begin that summer. “

THE NEW MOON MAP FROM NASA

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter science team released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created. This new topographic map shows the surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon with a pixel scale close to 328 feet.

Although the moon is Earth's closest neighbor, knowledge of its morphology is still limited. Due to the limitations of previous missions, a global map of the moon’s topography at high resolution has not existed until now. With LRO's Wide Angle Camera and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument, scientists can now accurately portray the shape of the entire moon at high resolution."

COLLAPSE OF MASSIVE STAR CREATES A STELLAR-MASS BLACK HOLE

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"On the left, an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey shows Cygnus X-1, outlined in a red box. Cygnus X-1 is located near large active regions of star formation in the Milky Way, as seen in this image that spans some 700 light years across. An artist's illustration on the right depicts what astronomers think is happening within the Cygnus X-1 system. Cygnus X-1 is a so-called stellar-mass black hole, a class of black holes that comes from the collapse of a massive star. The black hole pulls material from a massive, blue companion star toward it. This material forms a disk (shown in red and orange) that rotates around the black hole before falling into it or being redirected away from the black hole in the form of powerful jets.

A trio of papers with data from radio, optical and X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, has revealed new details about the birth of this famous black hole that took place millions of years ago. Using X-ray data from Chandra, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, and the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, scientists were able to determine the spin of Cygnus X-1 with unprecedented accuracy, showing that the black hole is spinning at very close to its maximum rate. Its event horizon -- the point of no return for material falling towards a black hole -- is spinning around more than 800 times a second.

Using optical observations of the companion star and its motion around its unseen companion, the team also made the most precise determination ever for the mass of Cygnus X-1, of 14.8 times the mass of the Sun. It was likely to have been almost this massive at birth, because of lack of time for it to grow appreciably."

GALATIC ENCOUNTERS MAY CAUSE GROWTH OF HUGE BLACK HOLES

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"Astronomers have used a large survey to test a prediction that close encounters between galaxies can trigger the rapid growth of supermassive black holes. Key to this work was Chandra's unique ability to pinpoint actively growing black holes through the X-rays they generate.

The researchers looked at 562 pairs of galaxies ranging in distances from about 3 billion to 8 billion light years from Earth. They found that the galaxies in the early stages of an encounter with another were more likely than isolated, or "lonelier" galaxies to have actively growing black holes in their cores.

These two composite images show a sample of the pairs of galaxies that are undergoing close encounters in the survey. In these images, the data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple and Hubble Space Telescope data are in gold. In both images, the point-like X-ray source near the center is generated by gas that has been heated to millions of degrees as it falls toward a supermassive black hole located in the middle of its host galaxy. The other faint X-ray emission may be caused by hot gas associated with the pair of galaxies.

The authors of the study estimate that nearly one-fifth of all moderately active black holes are found in galaxies undergoing the early stages of an interaction. This leaves open the question of what events are responsible for fueling the remaining 80% of growing black holes. Some of these may involve the late stages of mergers between two galaxies. Less violent events such as gas falling in from the halo of the galaxy, or the disruption of small satellite galaxies are also likely to play an important role.

The survey used in this research is called the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), which covers two square degrees on the sky with observations from several major space-based observatories including Chandra and Hubble. Accurate distance information about the galaxies was also derived from optical observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The researchers compared a sample of 562 galaxies in pairs with 2726 solo galaxies to come to their conclusions.

A paper describing this work has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The study was led by John Silverman from the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) at the University of Tokyo in Japan. There are 54 co-authors from various institutions around the world.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/IPMU/J.Silverman et al; Optical: NASA/STScI/Caltech/N.Scoville et al."

DAN TANI TALKS ABOUT BEING AN ASTRONAUT

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

In Their Own Words
Dan Tani,
Astronaut

What made you want to become an astronaut?

When I was a little boy, I was not one of those astronauts, and there are some, that wanted to be an astronaut when they were four years old or six years old. But I loved, I thought aviation was incredibly exciting and I liked model rockets. I used to fly model rockets when I was in elementary school. Just making stuff go fast and high was really exciting. Of course, if you would have asked me if I wanted to be an astronaut, I would have said absolutely, but it wasn't something I carried as a goal since childhood.

And then in college I became an engineer and learned how stuff works, how to build things and I got a job in an aerospace company and we were building satellites and satellite parts and I got to meet a few astronauts and when I met them I realized, hey, it's a job and I never even thought of being an astronaut as a job. /// And then I heard they were taking applications for that job, so I thought, who doesn't want to be an astronaut? /// So, got the application, filled it in, mailed it off and almost forgot about it. I just felt like I bought the lottery ticket, stuck it in my pocket and forgot about it. I was really surprised when they gave me a call and asked me if I wanted to interview and equally surprised when I got selected for the class of '96.

What is astronaut training like?

It's fun. We sort of go back to school. For the first two years we're called astronaut candidates, or ASCANs for short and ASCAN training is learning everything you can about NASA so we go to all the centers, we learn about what they do. It's all about learning how the space station works, when I joined it was all about learning how the space shuttle works and then it's about all the skills you're going to need as an astronaut, so some robotics skills and some spacewalking skills and some fix-it skills and some speaking skills. And so it's sort of going to school for almost two years and then when you come out of it, you're an eligible astronaut for assignment and the lucky ones get picked first and the more normal ones like us have to wait a little bit and so it was five years, I guess it was four years after I joined that I got selected for my first mission.

What was adapting to space like?

It felt pretty normal pretty quickly. When we go up on the space shuttle, we don't dock until the third day and so that means we have two full days of living in the space shuttle to kind of get used to weightlessness, to get used to brushing your teeth in weightlessness, putting on your socks, which is comically difficult to do in weightlessness and so you've sort of adapted that, doing your everyday stuff in weightlessness. Now you get into the station and it's a real benefit, there's just a lot more room. There's more to, so you're not elbowing your buddy every time you want to move around, or, again, when you put on your socks or your shoes and so in that way it's a lot easier. And then we, space station is outfitted with lots of computers to provide you some entertainment, also some communication with home so you can talk to your family virtually every day and so that feels a lot more normal. So living on the space station I thought was a very fast adaptation.

Describe the view from space?

The two great things about going into space are floating and looking out the window, and they would flip-flop in priority day to day in my mind. Looking out the window is a spectacular privilege. We're two hundred something miles above the Earth, we're going 17,000 mph, we cover most of the populated land mass because of the inclination of our orbit.

To look down at the earth and see both very familiar sights like your hometown and unfamiliar sights like the middle of Australia, which is incredibly beautiful, the colors and textures of central Australia are just spectacular, that was a motivator every day for space for me. Even out the little window, it was amazing.

So now you put the helmet on, you put the spacesuit on, you get in the airlock, you close the door behind you, you open the door out into space and now your window has become a full, 180-degree mask view. And the thing about spacewalks is we're not out there for the view, we're there to do the work and I think every spacewalker would tell you, the view is great, we think, because as far as I remember, every spacewalk was stuff right here. And so my memory of the spacewalks really is what's here and I had to force myself to have moments where I would appreciate the setting, the view and take some pictures and remember it that way. It is spectacular. It's amazing to hold onto the International Space Station, you're going 17 and a half thousand miles an hour, and hold on and just sort of look down at your feet and 200 miles under your feet, there goes the coast of California and, oops, nine minutes later, there goes New York City as you're flying over and then on your way to Europe.

What was the biggest surprise of spaceflight?

The biggest surprise to me was that when you're in space, with the weightlessness, it is, I call weightlessness 75 percent enjoyable, 75 percent unbelievably fun, 25 percent just a pain in the neck. And the pain the neck aspect is you're used to, on the ground you're used to doing things without thinking, you're used to writing something down, putting the pen down. The pen stays there, the paper stays there and you can turn around and when you turn back, the pen's there, paper's there.

Well, since everything floats in space, you have to think about absolutely everything you touch and everything that you want to touch. When you're eating, in space, you have to, generally people will eat one thing at a time because to eat your meat and your potatoes and your drink, you have to hold down, tie down, find a fixture for each item between if you're going to pick something new. Otherwise you're just juggling stuff and it'll get out of control. So generally most people will eat one thing, all, fold it up, throw that away. Open up the next thing, eat that next thing and roll it up, throw that away. Deal with one thing at a time because it's just too complex to have more than two things, one thing in each hand, at any time. And one of the pleasures of coming back to the ground was not having to think about eating, not having to think about my utensils. I could put them down and it was magic, they just stayed right there."

NASA TO HOST A HUMAN SPACE EXPLORATION WORKSHOP IN NOVEMBER

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

“WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a three-day Human Space Exploration Community Workshop in San Diego starting on Monday, Nov. 14. The agency will introduce the International Space Exploration Coordination Group's Global Exploration Roadmap during the event.

The workshop will frame the Global Exploration Roadmap, with overviews of NASA's plans for human spaceflight, including exploration missions to an asteroid and Mars. The goal is to review the work done developing international exploration scenarios while seeking community input on the long-term scenarios represented in the roadmap.

NASA is seeking industry and academia feedback to shape strategy, assist with investment priorities and refine international exploration scenarios for human exploration and operations through the 2020's. The agency has outlined an ambitious program moving forward that relies on private industry to assume transportation of cargo and crew to the International Space Station, while NASA focuses on deep space exploration.

The workshop is part of a continuing agency effort to engage the broader space community in appropriate forums. More events will follow as part of a series of "theme focused" opportunities for human spaceflight exploration planning and engagement.”

FLOWS ON THE SLOPES OF MARS

The following is from the NASA website:

This image, which combines orbital imagery with 3-D modeling, shows flows that appear in spring and summer on a slope inside Mars' Newton Crater. Sequences of observations recording the seasonal changes at this site and a few others with similar flows might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Evidence for that possible interpretation is presented in a report by McEwen et al. in the Aug. 5, 2011, edition of Science. This image has been reprojected to show a view of a slope as it would be seen from a helicopter inside the crater, with a synthetic Mars-like sky. The source observation was made May 30, 2011, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Color has been enhanced. The season was summer at the location, 41.6 degrees south latitude, 202.3 degrees east longitude. The flow features are narrow (one-half to five yards or meters wide), relatively dark markings on steep (25 to 40 degree) slopes at several southern hemisphere locations. Repeat imaging by HiRISE shows the features appear and incrementally grow during warm seasons and fade in cold seasons. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
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NEEMO 15 AND WORK ON ASTEROID SURFACES

The following article excerpt is from the NASA website:

NEEMO 15 Commander Shannon Walker (NASA) and fellow aquanaut David Saint-Jacques (Canadian Space Agency) use a small telescoping boom as a means of translating across a simulated asteroid surface. Each end of the small boom can be anchored to the surface by either magnets or tethers and the astronauts can traverse the surface by alternating anchor points. Various translation techniques are being tested during this 13-day NEEMO mission.

NEEMO, which stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, is one facet of NASA's Analog and Field Testing Missions. As NASA plans to expand human spaceflight and robotic exploration beyond low Earth orbit, astronauts are being trained to meet these challenges. Future destinations may include the moon, near Earth asteroids and Mars and its moons.

To prepare for the challenge of exploring these destinations in space, NASA conducts missions here on Earth, in remote locations that have physical similarities to extreme space environments.

DISK OF WATER FOUND SURROUNDING FORMING STAR

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

“WASHINGTON -- Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star. The findings suggest that this disk, which is poised to develop into a solar system, contains great quantities of water, suggesting that water-covered planets like Earth may be common in the universe. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.

Scientists previously found warm water vapor in planet-forming disks close to a central star. Evidence for vast quantities of water extending out into the cooler, far reaches of disks where comets take shape had not been seen until now. The more water available in disks for icy comets to form, the greater the chances that large amounts eventually will reach new planets through impacts.

"Our observations of this cold vapor indicate enough water exists in the disk to fill thousands of Earth oceans," said astronomer Michiel Hogerheijde of Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands. Hogerheijde is the lead author of a paper describing these findings in the Oct. 21 issue of the journal Science.

The star with this water-logged disk, called TW Hydrae, is 10 million years old and located about 175 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Hydra. The frigid watery haze detected by Hogerheijde and his team is thought to originate from ice-coated grains of dust near the disk's surface. Ultraviolet light from the star causes some water molecules to break free of this ice, creating a thin layer of gas with a light signature detected by Herschel's Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared, or HIFI.

"These are the most sensitive HIFI observations to-date," said Paul Goldsmith, NASA project scientist for the Herschel Space Observatory at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It is a testament to the instrument-builders that such weak signals can be detected."

TW Hydrae is an orange dwarf star, somewhat smaller and cooler than our yellow-white sun. The giant disk of material that encircles the star has a size nearly 200 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Over the next few million years, astronomers believe matter within the disk will collide and grow into planets, asteroids and other cosmic bodies. Dust and ice particles will assemble as comets.

As the new solar system evolves, icy comets are likely to deposit much of the water they contain on freshly created worlds through impacts, giving rise to oceans. Astronomers believe TW Hydrae and its icy disk may be representative of many other young star systems, providing new insights on how planets with abundant water could form throughout the universe.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission launched in 2009, carrying science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes. NASA's Herschel Project Office based at 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 U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.”