NASA Satellite Catches Major Hurricane Madeline as Hawaii Braces

NASA & NOAA - Suomi NPP Satellite Mission logo.

Aug. 30, 2016

Madeline (Central Pacific)

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP and NOAA's GOES satellites showed major Hurricane Madeline nearing the Hawaiian Islands. An animation of satellite imagery showed the movement of Madeline and nearby Hurricane Lester over a two day period.

Satellite Tracks Double Eastern Pacific Hurricanes

Video above: This animation of NOAA's GOES-West satellite imagery from August 27 to August 30 shows the movement of Category 4 Hurricane Madeline approaching Hawaii in the Central Pacific Ocean and Category 3 Hurricane Lester in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Video Credits: NASA/NOAA GOES Project.

At 7:25 p.m. EDT (23:25 UTC) on Aug. 29, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of major Hurricane Madeline. The storm's eye extended up to 13 nautical miles wide in diameter and Madeline appeared very well organized.

Image above: At 7:25 p.m. EDT (23:25 UTC) on Aug. 29, 2016, NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of Hurricane Madeline nearing Hawaii. Image Credits: NASA Goddard Rapid Response Team.

By 11 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. HST) the storm was classified as a major hurricane when maximum sustained winds reached 115 mph (185 kph). Madeline had become a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale.

On Aug. 30, Madeline has sparked a hurricane watch for Hawaii County, Hawaii.

At NASA/NOAA's GOES project office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, an animation of NOAA's GOES-East satellite imagery from Aug. 28 to Aug. 30 was created. The animation showed the movement of Hurricane Madeline intensify from a Category 2 to Category 4 hurricane. To the east of Madeline, Hurricane Lester was moving through the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

At 8 a.m. EDT (2 a.m. HST/1200 UTC), the center of Hurricane Madeline was located near 19.3 degrees north latitude and 147.7 degrees west longitude. That puts the eye of Madeline about 490 miles (790 km) east of Hilo, Hawaii and 680 miles (1,095 km) east of Honolulu, Hawaii.

NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) said that Madeline is moving toward the west near 9 mph (15 kph) and this motion is expected to become west southwesterly late today through early Thursday. On the forecast track, the center of Madeline will pass dangerously close to the Big Island Wednesday and Wednesday night. The estimated minimum central pressure is 950 millibars.

 NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite. Image Credits: NASA/NOAA

Maximum sustained winds are near 130 mph (215 kph) with higher gusts. Madeline is a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Some weakening is forecast through early Thursday. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 30 miles (45 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 125 miles (205 km).

Hurricane conditions are possible over Hawaii County on Wednesday, Aug. 31, and ocean swells are expected to reach the Hawaiian Islands over the next couple of days, possibly becoming damaging along some coastlines Wednesday and Thursday.

NOAA's CPHC said that heavy rains associated with Madeline may reach Hawaii County on Wednesday, and may impact other Hawaiian Islands later Wednesday into Friday. Madeline is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 5 to 10 inches, with isolated maximum amounts near 15 inches, especially over windward portions of the Big Island. This rainfall may lead to dangerous flash floods and mudslides.

For updates on Madeline, visit the CPHC website: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Rob Gutro.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Crew Preparing for Second Spacewalk and Soyuz Departure

ISS - Expedition 48 Mission patch.

Aug. 30, 2016

Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins are going back outside the International Space Station Thursday morning for their second spacewalk in less than two weeks. The duo will retract and cover a thermal control radiator no longer being used and install lights and a new high definition camera for better views of Earth and the station structure.

Less than a week after they complete that spacewalk, Williams will return to Earth with his Expedition 48 crewmates Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin. The two cosmonauts are checking their Sokol launch and entry suits today and packing the Soyuz before next week’s ride home. They will undock from the Poisk module Sept. 6 inside the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft and land in Kazakhstan ending their 5 ½-month mission.

Image above: Astronaut Jeff Williams is pictured Aug. 19 during a spacewalk to install an international docking adapter. Image Credit: NASA.

As always, advanced space science is continuing aboard the orbital laboratory. Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi gathered research samples for return to Earth aboard the home-bound Soyuz spacecraft. Over the weekend, Rubins completed a DNA sequencing process for the Biomolecule Sequencer study that could possibly benefit crew health and identify life in space. Body samples were also collected today for the Multi-Omics study observing the changes to an astronaut’s metabolism and immune system.

Related article:

First DNA Sequencing in Space a Game Changer
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/08/first-dna-sequencing-in-space-game.html

Related links:

Multi-Omics study: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1949.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Record-Breaking Galaxy Cluster Discovered

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Aug. 30, 2016

A new record for the most distant galaxy cluster has been set using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. This galaxy cluster may have been caught right after birth, a brief, but important stage of evolution never seen before.

Image above: Galaxy Cluster CL J1001+0220. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CEA/T. Wang et al; Infrared: ESO/UltraVISTA; Radio: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA.

The galaxy cluster is called CL J1001+0220 (CL J1001 for short) and is located about 11.1 billion light years from Earth. The discovery of this object pushes back the formation time of galaxy clusters – the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity – by about 700 million years.

“This galaxy cluster isn’t just remarkable for its distance, it’s also going through an amazing growth spurt unlike any we’ve ever seen,” said Tao Wang of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA)  who led the study. 

The core of CL J1001 contains eleven massive galaxies – nine of which are experiencing an impressive baby boom of stars. Specifically, stars are forming in the cluster’s core at a rate that is equivalent to over 3,000 Suns forming per year, a remarkably high value for a galaxy cluster, including those that are almost as distant, and therefore as young, as CL J1001.

The diffuse X-ray emission detected by Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton Observatory comes from a large amount of hot gas, one of the defining features of a true galaxy cluster.

“It appears that we have captured this galaxy cluster at a critical stage just as it has shifted from a loose collection of galaxies into a young, but fully formed galaxy cluster,” said co-author David Elbaz from CEA.

Previously, only these loose collections of galaxies, known as protoclusters, had been seen at greater distances than CL J1001.

The results suggest that elliptical galaxies in galaxy clusters like CL J1001 may form their stars during shorter and more violent outbursts than elliptical galaxies that are outside clusters. Also, this discovery suggests that much of the star formation in these galaxies happens after the galaxies fall onto the cluster, not before.

In comparing their results to computer simulations of the formation of clusters performed by other scientists, the team of astronomers found that CL J1001 has an unexpectedly high amount of mass in stars compared to the cluster’s total mass. This may show that the build-up of stars is more rapid in distant clusters than simulations imply, or it may show that clusters like CL J1001 are so rare that they are not found in today’s largest cosmological simulations.

“We think we’re going to learn a lot about the formation of clusters and the galaxies they contain by studying this object,” said co-author Alexis Finoguenov of the University of Helsinki in Finland, “and we’re going to be searching hard for other examples.”

The result is based on data from a large group of observatories in space and on the ground including Chandra, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, ESA’s XMM-Newton and Herschel Space Observatory, the NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) , the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique Northern Extended Millimeter Array (IRAM NOEMA), and ESO’s Very Large Telescope.

A paper describing these results will appear in The Astrophysical Journal on August 30th and is available online (http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07404). NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Read More from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2016/clj1001/

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon/Marshall Space Flight Center/Molly Porter/Chandra X-ray Center/Megan Watzke.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

"A powerful signal" from aliens?

Astrophysics & Exobiology logo.

August 30, 2016

A Russian radio telescope detected a strong signal that might suggest extraterrestrial intelligent transmission.

The detection of a "powerful signal" by a Russian radio telescope in 2015 that scrutinized the celestial vault looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence arouses great interest in the scientific community.

This signal whose characteristics might suggest to a transmission from an alien intelligence, might as well be a radio interference or the result of a natural phenomenon, reported over the weekend by the specialized website Centauri Dreams, for making public the first time this observation.

Image Above: The RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

"No one pretends that it is a transmission from an alien civilization but it certainly is worth further study," wrote Paul Gilster, the author of this site which covers scientific research on exploration deep space. The latter revealed the discovery after seeing a presentation on the subject by the Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone.

A similar star to the sun

The signal comes from the direction of a sun-like star located in the constellation of Hercules (HD164595) to about 95 light years from Earth.

Scientists know that this star has at least one planet and could be others.

The signal was detected 15 May 2015 by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in the Russian republic of Karachay-Cherkessia near the border with Georgia.

Image above: The Signal to be coming from a sun-like star HD 164595 (Artist's view). Image Credit: NASA.

The team of astronomers led by Nikolai Bursov of the Russian Academy of Sciences says that it is too early to determine the nature and origin.

But they think it is interesting enough "to ask for it to be the subject of continuous observation," wrote Paul Gilster.

This discovery should be a discussion at the 67th International Astronomical Congress to be held in Guadalajara, Mexico on 27 September.

A much more advanced civilization than ours

According to the researchers, if radio signal came from an isotropic antenna which radiates in all directions, this would be a much more advanced civilization than ours, called "Type II Kardashev" according to the scientists.

If the signal comes from a narrow emission band facing our solar system, this could be a closer human civilization.

Graphic Above: Strong leadership from the signal of HD 164595. "Raw" record of the signal together with expected shape of the signal for the point-like source in the position of HD 164595. Graphic Credit: Bursov et al.

According to Nick Suntzeff, an astronomer at the University of Texas A & M, quoted by the journal Ars Technica, the signal of 11 GHz is in the frequencies used by the military.

"If I were in the place of these astronomers observations I would continue but without much illusion given the strong possibility that it could be something military," said he said.

This detection is compared to that of the signal "Wow" captured in August 1977 by a US radio telescope or more recently the controversial observation of the star around which Tabby astronomers thought they had seen the giant structures built by an advanced civilization.

Related article:

An alien star in distant space seems to be acting very strangely
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/10/an-alien-star-in-distant-space-seems-to.html

Related links:

Planet Hunters: http://www.planethunters.org/

Centauri Dreams: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/

Images (mentioned), Graphic (mentioned), Text, Credits: NXP/AFP/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

First DNA Sequencing in Space a Game Changer

ISS - Expedition 48 Mission patch.

Aug. 29, 2016

For the first time ever, DNA was successfully sequenced in microgravity as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment performed by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins this weekend aboard the International Space Station. The ability to sequence the DNA of living organisms in space opens a whole new world of scientific and medical possibilities. Scientists consider it a game changer.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, contains the instructions each cell in an organism on Earth needs to live. These instructions are represented by the letters A, G, C and T, which stand for the four chemical bases of DNA, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Both the number and arrangement of these bases differ among organisms, so their order, or sequence, can be used to identify a specific organism.

Image above: NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins sequenced DNA in space for the first time ever for the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation, using the MinION sequencing device. Image Credit: NASA.

The Biomolecule Sequencer investigation moved us closer to this ability to sequence DNA in space by demonstrating, for the first time, that DNA sequencing is possible in an orbiting spacecraft.

With a way to sequence DNA in space, astronauts could diagnose an illness, or identify microbes growing in the International Space Station and determine whether or not they represent a health threat. A space-based DNA sequencer would be an important tool to help protect astronaut health during long duration missions on the journey to Mars, and future explorers could also potentially use the technology to identify DNA-based life forms beyond Earth.

The Biomolecule Sequencer investigation sent samples of mouse, virus and bacteria DNA to the space station to test a commercially available DNA sequencing device called MinION, developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. The MinION works by sending a positive current through pores embedded in membranes inside the device, called nanopores. At the same time, fluid containing a DNA sample passes through the device. Individual DNA molecules partially block the nanopores and change the current in a way that is unique to that particular DNA sequence.  By looking at these changes, researchers can identify the specific DNA sequence.

Image above: NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) crew member, Matthias Maurer of ESA, works on inserting samples into the MinION DNA sequencer as part of the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment. Researchers tested the device aboard the analog to minimize unknowns and see how the device worked in various extreme environments. Image Credit: NASA.

Rubins, who has a background in molecular biology, conducted the test aboard the station while researchers simultaneously sequenced identical samples on the ground. The tests were set up to attempt to make spaceflight conditions, primarily microgravity, the only variables that could account for differences in results. For example, the samples were prepared on the ground for sequencing and researchers selected organisms whose DNA has already been completely sequenced so that they knew what results to expect.

Using the device in the microgravity environment introduces several potential challenges, according to Aaron Burton, NASA planetary scientist and principal investigator, including the formation of air bubbles in the fluid. On Earth, bubbles rise to the top of a liquid solution and can be removed by centrifuge, but in space, bubbles are less predictable.

“In space, if an air bubble is introduced, we don’t know how it will behave,” said Burton. “Our biggest concern is that it could block the nanopores.”

The technology demonstration also seeks to validate that the device is durable enough to withstand vibration during launch and can operate reliably in a microgravity environment when it comes to the measurement of changes in current or the conversion of those changes into DNA sequences. In addition, researchers will be looking for any other factors that could produce errors or impact performance on orbit.

Image above: The MinION™ DNA sequencer from Oxford Nanopore Technologies fits in the palm of a hand. Image Credit: Oxford Nanopore Technologies.

“Those are just the potential problems we’ve identified,” said project manager and NASA microbiologist Sarah Castro-Wallace. “A lot of the things that might introduce errors are simply unknown at this point.”

To minimize those unknowns, researchers recently tested the entire sequencing process on a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation, or NEEMO, in the Aquarius Base research facility 60 feet underwater off the coast of Florida.

“The NEEMO tests went smoothly,” Castro-Wallace said. “In terms of a harsh environment, with different humidity, temperature and pressure, we looked at a lot of variables and the sequencer performed as expected.”

NEEMO aquanauts collected environmental samples from the habitat, extracted and prepared the DNA for sequencing, and finally sequenced the DNA as part of a continuation of the Biomolecule Sequencer investigation. Testing this sample-to-sequencer process in an extreme environment is an important step towards its use on the ISS.

The investigation team includes others at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center, as well as partners at Weill Cornell Medical College and University of California at San Francisco.

As the researchers compare results from the sequences collected in microgravity and on Earth, so far everything seems to match up.

“A next step is to test the entire process in space, including sample preparation as well as performing the sequencing,” said Castro-Wallace. Then astronauts can move beyond creating a known DNA sequence and actually extract, prepare and sequence DNA to identify unknown microbes on orbit.

ScienceCasts: Sequencing DNA in Space. Video Credit: ScienceAtNASA

“Onboard sequencing makes it possible for the crew to know what is in their environment at any time,” Castro-Wallace said. “That allows us on the ground to take appropriate action – do we need to clean this up right away, or will taking antibiotics help or not? We can resupply the station with disinfectants and antibiotics now, but once crews move beyond the station’s low Earth orbit, we need to know when to save those precious resources and when to use them.”

In addition, the sequencer can become a tool for other science investigations aboard the station. For example, researchers could use it to examine changes in genetic material or gene expression on orbit rather than waiting for the samples to return to Earth for testing.

"Welcome to systems biology in space,” said Rubins after the first few DNA molecules had been sequenced successfully. She went on to thank the ground team for their efforts. “It is very exciting to be with you guys together at the dawn of genomics biology and systems biology in space."

Related links:

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html

Biomolecule Sequencer experiment: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/biomolecule_sequencer

NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation, or NEEMO: http://www.nasa.gov/hrp/research/analogs/neemo

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA Johnson Space Center/Melissa Gaskill/Kristine Rainey.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Team Probes Peculiar Age-Defying Star

NASA - Spitzer Space Telescope logo.

Aug. 29, 2016

Image above: An age-defying star designated as IRAS 19312+1950 (arrow) exhibits features characteristic of a very young star and a very old star. The object stands out as extremely bright inside a large, chemically rich cloud of material, as shown in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. A NASA-led team of scientists thinks the star – which is about 10 times as massive as our sun and emits about 20,000 times as much energy – is a newly forming protostar. That was a big surprise because the region had not been known as a stellar nursery before. But the presence of a nearby interstellar bubble, which indicates the presence of a recently formed massive star, also supports this idea. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

For years, astronomers have puzzled over a massive star lodged deep in the Milky Way that shows conflicting signs of being extremely old and extremely young.

Researchers initially classified the star as elderly, perhaps a red supergiant. But a new study by a NASA-led team of researchers suggests that the object, labeled IRAS 19312+1950, might be something quite different – a protostar, a star still in the making.

“Astronomers recognized this object as noteworthy around the year 2000 and have been trying ever since to decide how far along its development is,” said Martin Cordiner, an astrochemist working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He is the lead author of a paper in the Astrophysical Journal describing the team’s findings, from observations made using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory.

Located more than 12,000 light-years from Earth, the object first stood out as peculiar when it was observed at particular radio frequencies. Several teams of astronomers studied it using ground-based telescopes and concluded that it is an oxygen-rich star about 10 times as massive as the sun. The question was: What kind of star?

Some researchers favor the idea that the star is evolved – past the peak of its life cycle and on the decline. For most of their lives, stars obtain their energy by fusing hydrogen in their cores, as the sun does now. But older stars have used up most of their hydrogen and must rely on heavier fuels that don't last as long, leading to rapid deterioration.

Two early clues – intense radio sources called masers – suggested the star was old. In astronomy, masers occur when the molecules in certain kinds of gases get revved up and emit a lot of radiation over a very limited range of frequencies. The result is a powerful radio beacon – the microwave equivalent of a laser.

One maser observed with IRAS 19312+1950 is almost exclusively associated with late-stage stars. This is the silicon oxide maser, produced by molecules made of one silicon atom and one oxygen atom. Researchers don’t know why this maser is nearly always restricted to elderly stars, but of thousands of known silicon oxide masers, only a few exceptions to this rule have been noted.

Also spotted with the star was a hydroxyl maser, produced by molecules comprised of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom. Hydroxyl masers can occur in various kinds of astronomical objects, but when one occurs with an elderly star, the radio signal has a distinctive pattern – it’s especially strong at a frequency of 1612 megahertz. That’s the pattern researchers found in this case.

Even so, the object didn’t entirely fit with evolved stars. Especially puzzling was the smorgasbord of chemicals found in the large cloud of material surrounding the star. A chemical-rich cloud like this is typical of the regions where new stars are born, but no such stellar nursery had been identified near this star.

Scientists initially proposed that the object was an old star surrounded by a surprising cloud typical of the kind that usually accompanies young stars. Another idea was that the observations might somehow be capturing two objects: a very old star and an embryonic cloud of star-making material in the same field.

Cordiner and his colleagues began to reconsider the object, conducting observations using ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory and analyzing data gathered earlier with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Both telescopes operate at infrared wavelengths, which gave the team new insight into the gases, dust and ices in the cloud surrounding the star.

The additional information leads Cordiner and colleagues to think the star is in a very early stage of formation. The object is much brighter than it first appeared, they say, emitting about 20,000 times the energy of our sun. The team found large quantities of ices made from water and carbon dioxide in the cloud around the object. These ices are located on dust grains relatively close to the star, and all this dust and ice blocks out starlight making the star seem dimmer than it really is.

In addition, the dense cloud around the object appears to be collapsing, which happens when a growing star pulls in material. In contrast, the material around an evolved star is expanding and is in the process of escaping to the interstellar medium. The entire envelope of material has an estimated mass of 500 to 700 suns, which is much more than could have been produced by an elderly or dying star.

“We think the star is probably in an embryonic stage, getting near the end of its accretion stage – the period when it pulls in new material to fuel its growth,” said Cordiner.

Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credits: NASA/JPL

Also supporting the idea of a young star are the very fast wind speeds measured in two jets of gas streaming away from opposite poles of the star. Such jets of material, known as a bipolar outflow, can be seen emanating from young or old stars. However, fast, narrowly focused jets are rarely observed in evolved stars. In this case, the team measured winds at the breakneck speed of at least 200,000 miles per hour (90 kilometers per second) – a common characteristic of a protostar.

Still, the researchers acknowledge that the object is not a typical protostar. For reasons they can’t explain yet, the star has spectacular features of both a very young and a very old star.

“No matter how one looks at this object, it’s fascinating, and it has something new to tell us about the life cycles of stars,” said Steven Charnley, a Goddard astrochemist and co-author of the paper.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission, whose science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado.

Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led principal investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.

For more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, by Elizabeth Zubritsky/Ashley Morrow/JPL/Elizabeth Landau.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Sentinel-1 provides new insight into Italy’s earthquake

ESA - Sentinel-1 Mission logo.

29 August 2016

Sentinel-1 satellite

On 24 August, an earthquake struck central Italy, claiming at least 290 lives and causing widespread damage. Satellite images are being used to help emergency aid organisations, while scientists have begun to analyse ground movement.

Ground displacement from Italy’s earthquake

The Italian peninsula is prone to earthquakes owing to the fault lines created by the separation of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates. The fault line separating these two plates runs below the central Apennine mountains and along Italy’s Adriatic coast.

Under the coordination of the Italian Department of Civil Protection, scientists from Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology and the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment of the National Research Council are studying data from the Sentinel-1 satellite mission and other spaceborne radar missions to map surface deformations caused by the earthquake.

The team found that the main deformation pattern shows subsidence reaching about 20 cm in the Accumoli area, and sideways movement of up to 16 cm.

Italy earthquake deformation

The scientists use a technique that allows them to map surface deformations by comparing radar images over the affected area taken before and after the event.

The team has benefited from the availability of both Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B scans. The scientists were able to quantify the ground movement in both vertical and east–west directions by combining the radar scans obtained as the satellites flew both south to north and north to south.

Sentinel-1 is not the only satellite providing information on this recent quake: scientists are also relying on data from the Italian space agency’s Cosmo-SkyMed satellites, as well as satellite imagery from other space agencies.

In addition, data from a multitude of Copernicus contributing missions are being used to produce maps through the Copernicus Emergency Management Service for damage assessment.

Source fault of Italy’s earthquake

Sentinel-1 is a two-satellite mission for Europe’s Copernicus environment monitoring programme, led by the European Commission. The first satellite – Sentinel-1A – was launched in 2014, while its sister Sentinel-1B is still in its commissioning phase following launch just four months ago.

With its 250 km-wide swatch over land surfaces, Sentinel-1 gives scientists a broad view of the displacement, allowing them to examine the ground displacement caused by this earthquake and develop the scientific knowledge of quakes.

Once Sentinel-1B is operational next month, it will be possible to perform routine scans over critical areas like Italy every six days with the two-satellite constellation.

Related links:

Sentinel-1: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1

IREA-CNR: http://www.irea.cnr.it/

INGV: http://istituto.ingv.it/the-instit360333%20ute/the-institute/view?set_language=en

Copernicus EMS: http://emergency.copernicus.eu/mapping/list-of-components/EMSR177

Geohazards TEP: https://geohazards-tep.eo.esa.int/#!

European Commission Copernicus site: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/space/copernicus/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016)/ESA/CNR-IREA.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch