Carrie M. Anderson | |
|---|---|
 Carrie Anderson | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | Arizona State University New Mexico State University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Planetary atmospheres |
| Institutions | Goddard Space Flight Center |
Carrie Anderson is an American planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. [1]
Anderson is from Arizona. [2] She earned a Bachelors in physics from Arizona State University in 2000. [2] She moved to the New Mexico State University for her doctoral studies and graduated in 2006. [3] Upon graduation she became a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow. [4]
Anderson is a planetary astronomer in the Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, having joined NASA as a civil servant in 2009. She served as the Associate Chief of the Planetary Systems Laboratory from 2011 to 2016. [2]
Anderson's scientific research focuses on the remote sensing of planetary atmospheres, [5] primarily in the areas of thermal structure and composition, using space- and ground-based data. Her earliest scientific work focused on the exosphere of Mercury (planet). [6] She now performs radiative transfer analyses of the outer planets, including the effects of aerosols and condensates, as well as data analysis techniques in the visible, near-IR, mid-IR, far-IR, and submillimeter spectral regions. Anderson's research also includes transmission spectroscopy measurements of thin ice films using her SPECtroscopy of Titan-Related ice AnaLogs (SPECTRAL) high-vacuum chamber located in her Spectroscopy for Planetary ICes Environments (SPICE) laboratory.[ citation needed ]
Anderson's more recent research concerns the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, which is, according to NASA, "a model for what the early Earth might have been like." [7] Titan has a thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere and is the only world in the solar system other than Earth known to possess stable liquid on its surface." (Titan's seas are not water, however, but methane and ethane.) [8]
In 2015, Anderson reported her discovery of a chemically new, high-altitude ice cloud residing in Titan's south polar stratosphere during Titan's early southern winter season, chemically consistent with co-condensed hydrogen cyanide and benzene. [9] [10] [11] During her 12-year tenure on the Cassini Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS) [12] team, Anderson also discovered additional ice clouds in Titan's stratosphere, including a co-condensed ice mixture containing hydrogen cyanide and cyanoacetylene, methane ice clouds formed via subsidence in Titan's lower stratosphere, [13] the solid-state photochemical formation of dicyanoacetylene ice – co-condensed with hydrogen cyanide ice, in Titan's early northern spring stratosphere, as well as the discovery that Titan's photochemical aerosol is chemically uniform throughout the atmosphere at altitudes below the stratopause. [14] [15] Anderson has been heavily engaged in operations of the Cassini-Huygens mission in the Saturn system. [16]
Anderson is currently the Deputy Principal Investigator (DPI) on a submillimeter heterodyne spectrometer, aimed at a mission proposal concept to Enceladus. She is also DPI of a joint GSFC/JPL SmallSat mission concept to Venus, with a submillimeter heterodyne spectrometer as the primary instrument. She is also actively engaged in mission design concepts for planetary flight mission opportunities as well as projects involving submillimeter heterodyne spectrometer designs for future planetary flight missions.[ citation needed ]
Anderson is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.[ citation needed ]
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine-and-a-half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, the second-largest in the Solar System and larger than any of the dwarf planets of the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and is the only known object in space other than Earth on which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.
Rhea is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon in the Solar System, with a surface area that is comparable to the area of Australia. It is the smallest body in the Solar System for which precise measurements have confirmed a shape consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium. It was discovered in 1672 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
Cassini–Huygens, commonly called Cassini, was a space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit, where it stayed from 2004 to 2017. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
Huygens was an atmospheric entry robotic space probe that landed successfully on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005. Built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), launched by NASA, it was part of the Cassini–Huygens mission and became the first spacecraft to land on Titan and the farthest landing from Earth a spacecraft has ever made. The probe was named after the 17th-century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Titan in 1655.
Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. It is about 500 kilometers in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. It is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System. Consequently, its surface temperature at noon reaches only −198 °C, far colder than a light-absorbing body would be. Despite its small size, Enceladus has a wide range of surface features, ranging from old, heavily cratered regions to young, tectonically deformed terrain.
This article provides a timeline of the Cassini–Huygens mission. Cassini was a collaboration between the United States' NASA, the European Space Agency ("ESA"), and the Italian Space Agency ("ASI") to send a probe to study the Saturnian system, including the planet, its rings, and its natural satellites. The Flagship-class uncrewed robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe, and ESA's Huygens lander which was designed to land on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The craft were named after astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
The exploration of Saturn has been solely performed by crewless probes. Three missions were flybys, which formed an extended foundation of knowledge about the system. The Cassini–Huygens spacecraft, launched in 1997, was in orbit from 2004 to 2017.
Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite is a NASA submillimetre astronomy satellite, and is the fourth spacecraft in the Small Explorer program (SMEX). It was launched on 6 December 1998, at 00:57:54 UTC, from Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Pegasus XL launch vehicle. The telescope was designed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and integrated by Ball Aerospace, while the spacecraft was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The mission's principal investigator is Gary J. Melnick.
Whether there is life on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is currently an open question and a topic of scientific assessment and research. Titan is far colder than Earth, but of all the places in the Solar System, Titan is the only place besides Earth known to have liquids in the form of rivers, lakes, and seas on its surface. Its thick atmosphere is chemically active and rich in carbon compounds. On the surface there are small and large bodies of both liquid methane and ethane, and it is likely that there is a layer of liquid water under its ice shell. Some scientists speculate that these liquid mixes may provide prebiotic chemistry for living cells different from those on Earth.
The atmosphere of Titan is the dense layer of gases surrounding Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It is the only thick atmosphere of a natural satellite in the Solar System. Titan's lower atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen (94.2%), methane (5.65%), and hydrogen (0.099%). There are trace amounts of other hydrocarbons, such as ethane, diacetylene, methylacetylene, acetylene, propane, PAHs and of other gases, such as cyanoacetylene, hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, cyanogen, acetonitrile, argon and helium. The isotopic study of nitrogen isotopes ratio also suggests acetonitrile may be present in quantities exceeding hydrogen cyanide and cyanoacetylene. The surface pressure is about 50% higher than on Earth at 1.5 bars which is near the triple point of methane and allows there to be gaseous methane in the atmosphere and liquid methane on the surface. The orange color as seen from space is produced by other more complex chemicals in small quantities, possibly tholins, tar-like organic precipitates.
Lakes of ethane and methane on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, have been detected by the Cassini–Huygens space probe, and had been suspected long before. The large ones are known as maria (seas) and the small ones as lacūs (lakes).
The climate of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is similar in many respects to that of Earth, despite having a far lower surface temperature. Its thick atmosphere, methane rain, and possible cryovolcanism create an analogue, though with different materials, to the climatic changes undergone by Earth during its far shorter year.
Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) is a proposed design for a lander for Saturn's moon Titan. TiME is a relatively low-cost, outer-planet mission designed to measure the organic constituents on Titan and would have performed the first nautical exploration of an extraterrestrial sea, analyze its nature and, possibly, observe its shoreline. As a Discovery-class mission it was designed to be cost-capped at US$425 million, not counting launch vehicle funding. It was proposed to NASA in 2009 by Proxemy Research as a scout-like pioneering mission, originally as part of NASA's Discovery Program. The TiME mission design reached the finalist stage during that Discovery mission selection, but was not selected, and despite attempts in the U.S. Senate failed to get earmark funding in 2013. A related Titan Submarine has also been proposed.
The Cassini space probe was deliberately disposed of via a controlled fall into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017, ending its nearly two-decade-long mission. This method was chosen to prevent biological contamination of any of the moons of Saturn now thought to offer potentially habitable environments. Factors that influenced the mission end method included the amount of rocket fuel left, the health of the spacecraft, and funding for operations on Earth.
Journey to Enceladus and Titan (JET) is an astrobiology mission concept to assess the habitability potential of Enceladus and Titan, moons of Saturn.
Dragonfly is a planned spacecraft and NASA mission to send a robotic rotorcraft to the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It is planned to be launched in June 2027. It would be the first aircraft on Titan and is intended to make the first powered and fully controlled atmospheric flight on any moon, with the intention of studying prebiotic chemistry and extraterrestrial habitability. It would then use its vertical takeoffs and landings (VTOL) capability to move between exploration sites.
Oceanus is a NASA/JPL orbiter mission concept proposed in 2017 for the New Frontiers mission #4, but it was not selected for development. If selected at some future opportunity, Oceanus would travel to Saturn's moon Titan to assess its habitability. Studying Titan would help understand the early Earth and exoplanets which orbit other stars. The mission is named after Oceanus, the Greek god of oceans.
SPRITE was a proposed Saturn atmospheric probe mission concept of the NASA. SPRITE is a design for an atmospheric entry probe that would travel to Saturn from Earth on its own cruise stage, then enter the atmosphere of Saturn, and descend taking measurements in situ.
Amy Simon is an American planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, involved in several missions of the Solar System Exploration Program.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .Now, as a space scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Carrie studies the atmosphere on Titan, one of Saturn's moons and the second largest moon in the solar system. Titan is also a model for what the early Earth might have been like. To learn about Titan, she uses an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft called CIRS.
The newly spotted feature—part of a cloud system known as the south polar vortex—suggests that winter in the southern hemisphere of Titan will be even colder than predicted, scientists said. The atmospheric signal "looks pretty normal, then BOOM!, increases," indicating the presence of a brand-new cloud, said Cassini participating scientist Carrie Anderson, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
