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This summer, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will undertake NASA’s first-ever attempt to touch the surface of an asteroid, collect a sample of it, and safely back away.

But since arriving at asteroid Bennu over a year ago, the mission team has been tackling an unexpected challenge: how to accomplish this feat at an asteroid whose surface is blanketed in building-sized boulders.

Using these hazardous boulders as signposts, the mission team developed a new precision navigation method to overcome the challenge.

The OSIRIS-REx team had originally planned to use a LIDAR system to navigate to Bennu’s surface during the Touch-And-Go, or TAG, sample collection event. LIDAR is similar to radar, but it uses laser pulses rather than radio waves to measure distance.

The OSIRIS-REx Guidance, Navigation, and Control, or GNC, LIDAR is designed to navigate the spacecraft to a relatively hazard-free surface.

The mission had originally envisioned a touchdown site 164 ft (50 meters) in diameter, but the largest safe areas on Bennu are much smaller.

The biggest site is just 52 ft (16 m) wide, or roughly 10 percent of the safe area envisioned. The team realized that they needed a more precise navigation technique that would allow the spacecraft to accurately target very small sites while dodging potential hazards.

In the face of this challenge, the OSIRIS-REx team switched to a new navigation method called Natural Feature Tracking, or NFT.

NFT provides more extensive navigation capabilities than LIDAR, and is key for executing what the team is calling “Bullseye TAG,” which delivers the spacecraft to the much smaller sampling area.

As an optical navigation technique, it requires the creation of a high-resolution image catalog onboard the spacecraft.

Earlier this year, the spacecraft made reconnaissance passes over the mission’s primary and backup sample collection sites, designated Nightingale and Osprey, flying as close as 0.4 miles (625 m) over the surface.

During these flyovers, the spacecraft collected images from different angles and lighting conditions to complete the NFT image catalog.

The team uses this catalog to identify boulders and craters unique to the sample site region and will upload this information to the spacecraft before the sample collection event.

NFT autonomously guides the spacecraft to Bennu’s surface by comparing the onboard image catalog with the real-time navigation images taken during descent.

As the spacecraft descends to the surface, NFT updates its predicted point of contact depending on the spacecraft’s position in relation to the landmarks.

On the ground, team members created “hazard maps” for both the Nightingale and Osprey sites to document all of the surface features that could potentially harm the spacecraft, like large rocks or steep slopes.

The team used the image catalog in conjunction with data from the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter, or OLA, to create 3D maps that closely model Bennu’s topography.

As part of NFT, these maps document boulder heights and crater depths, and guide the spacecraft away from potential hazards while targeting a very small site.

During descent, if the spacecraft predicts it will touch unsafe terrain, it will autonomously wave-off and back away from the surface.

However, if it sees that the area is free of hazards, it will continue to descend and attempt to collect a sample.

NFT will be used in April to navigate the spacecraft during its first sample collection rehearsal. The operations team performed preliminary testing during the Orbital B mission phase in late 2019, and the results demonstrated that NFT works in real-life conditions as designed. NFT will also be used for navigation during the second rehearsal planned for June.

OSIRIS-REx’s first sample collection attempt is scheduled for late August. The spacecraft will depart Bennu in 2021 and is scheduled to deliver the sample to Earth in September 2023.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing.

Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, visit https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex and https://www.asteroidmission.org .

Brittany Enos is with the University of Arizona.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – On Friday, the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport issued emergency declarations due to the potential impact on their communities of COVID-19, which so far has not been detected in Lake County.

Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora and Lakeport City Manager Margaret Silveira took the actions about an hour apart late Friday afternoon.

Both cities made the declarations citing the existence of “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property” due to the potential for COVID-19’s introduction into their respective communities.

The actions by the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport followed by a few hours Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin’s proclamation of the existence of a local emergency due to existing conditions that could introduce COVID-19 into Lake County, as Lake County News has reported.

Local officials all emphasized that no cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed within Lake County yet, but that the actions are meant to position them to receive state and federal assistance should it become necessary.

“This declaration will allow us to effectively respond to an outbreak, request mutual aid and possibly obtain reimbursement for expenses,” the city of Lakeport said in a statement about its emergency declaration.

While COVID-19 has not been detected in Lake County so far, counties in the North Coast region including Humboldt and Sonoma have reported confirmed cases of the virus.

Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a statewide emergency. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic earlier this week and on Friday President Donald Trump declared a national emergency.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors ratified Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace’s proclamation of a local health emergency. The board also must consider ratifying Sheriff Martin’s proclamation at its meeting next week.

Similarly, the city councils of Clearlake and Lakeport will consider ratification at their meetings next week. The Lakeport City Council is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 17; the Clearlake City Council meeting is set for 6 p.m. Thursday, March 19.

The city of Lakeport’s statement on the emergency declaration said its mission is to work with county agencies and the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“We ask that the public monitor information released by the Lake County Public Health Department, the California Department of Public Health and the United States Centers for Disease Control,” the city of Lakeport’s statement said.

The city of Clearlake’s full proclamation is published below.




WHEREAS, City of Clearlake Municipal Code Section 2-11.6 empowers the Director of Emergency Services (City Manager) to proclaim the existence or threatened existence of a local emergency when the city is affected or likely to be affected by a public calamity and the City Council is not in session; and

WHEREAS, Government Code Section 8550 et seq., including Section 8558(c), authorize the City Manager to proclaim a local emergency when the City is threatened by conditions of disaster or extreme peril to the safety of persons and property within the City that are likely to be beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of the City; and

WHEREAS, a novel coronavirus, COVID-19, causes infectious disease and was first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China in December 2019. Symptoms of COVID19 include fever, cough, and shortness of breath; outcomes have ranged from mild to severe illness, and, in some cases, death. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated the virus is a tremendous public health threat; and

WHEREAS, Chinese health officials have reported tens of thousands of cases of COVID-19 in China, with the virus reportedly spreading from person-to-person. COVID-19 illnesses, most of them associated with travel from Wuhan, are also being reported in 117 countries, with over 44,000 cases, including the United States; and

WHEREAS, on January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” and on March 11, 2020, the WHO has elevated the public health emergency to the status of a pandemic. On January 31, 2020, United States Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II declared a public health emergency for the United States to aid the nation’s healthcare community in responding to COVID-19. On February 26, 2020 the County of Orange declared a local emergency and a local health emergency. On March 4, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a State of Emergency in California; and

WHEREAS, on February 2, 2020, the federal government initiated the suspension of entry of foreign nationals who were in China during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States. United States citizens, residents, and their immediate family members who were in China during the 14-day period preceding their entry into the United States are permitted entry, but are redirected to one of 11 airports where the CDC has quarantine stations to undergo health screening. Depending on their health and travel history, they will have some level of restrictions on their movements for 14 days from the time they left China. On February 29, 2020, the President expanded restrictions to include all aliens who were physically present within the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States, with additional restrictions being imposed on travel from Europe as of March 11, 2020; and

WHEREAS, as of March 12, 2020, the WHO reported that, to date, 125,048 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 4,613 of which resulted in death, across 117 countries; and

WHEREAS, in declaring a State of Emergency, the Governor indicated that, as of March 4, 2020, there were 129 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, including 53 in California, and more than 9,400 Californians across 49 counties in home monitoring based on possible travel-based exposure to the virus, with officials expecting the number of cases in California, the United States, and worldwide to increase; and

WHEREAS, the Governor and the California Department of Health on March 11, 2020 issued a statement entitled “California Public Health Experts: Mass Gatherings Should be Postponed or Canceled Statewide to Slow the Spread of COVID-19,” determining that gatherings should be postponed or canceled across the state until at least the end of March. Non-essential gatherings must be limited to no more than 250 people, while smaller events can proceed only if the organizers can implement social distancing of 6 feet per person. Gatherings of individuals who are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19 should be limited to no more than 10 people, while also following social distancing guidelines. Furthermore, essential gatherings should only be conducted if the essential activity could not be postponed or achieved without gathering, meaning that some other means of communication could not be used to conduct the essential function; and

WHEREAS, the Governor on March 12, 2020 issued Executive Order N-25-20, ordering, inter alia, that all residents are to heed the orders and guidance of state and local public health officials; and

WHEREAS, the President on March 13, 2020 declared a state of emergency in the United States of America; and

WHEREAS, the City of Clearlake has the power to impose measures to promote social distancing including but not limited to limitations on public events; and

WHEREAS, conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property have arisen due to the potential introduction of COVID-19 to Clearlake and Lake County; and

WHEREAS, such conditions are beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of the City and require the combined forces of other political subdivisions to combat; and

WHEREAS, it is imperative to prepare for and respond to suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases, to implement measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, and to prepare to respond to an increasing number of individuals requiring medical care and hospitalization; and

WHEREAS, if COVID-19 spreads in California at a rate comparable to the rate of spread in other countries, the number of persons requiring medical care may exceed locally available resources, and controlling outbreaks minimizes the risk to the public, maintains the health and safety of the community, and limits the spread of infection in the community and within the healthcare delivery system; and

WHEREAS, the mobilization of local resources, ability to coordinate interagency response, accelerate procurement of vital supplies, use mutual aid, and allow for future reimbursement by the state and federal governments will be critical to successfully responding to COVID-19; and

WHEREAS, the City Manager, as the City’s Director of Emergency Services, has the power to declare a local emergency as authorized by Government Code section 8630 and Clearlake Municipal Code section 2-11.6.

NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS PROCLAIMED AND ORDERED by the City Manager of the City of Clearlake as follows:

A. A local emergency exists based on the existence of conditions of disaster or of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property caused by an epidemic, as detailed in the recitals set forth above.

B. The area of the City which is endangered/imperiled is the entire City.

C. During the existence of this local emergency, the powers, functions, and duties of the emergency organization of this City shall be those prescribed by state law and by ordinances, resolutions, and orders of this City, including but not limited to the City of Clearlake Emergency Operations Plan.

D. The City Council shall review and ratify this proclamation within seven (7) days as required by state law, and if ratified, shall continue to exist until the City Council proclaims the termination of this local emergency. The City Council shall review the need for continuing the local emergency as required by state law until it terminates the local emergency, and shall terminate the local emergency at the earliest possible date that conditions warrant.

E. That the City of Clearlake orders that, within the boundaries of the City of Clearlake, the Public Health Experts’ recommendations shall be deemed mandatory.

F. That a copy of this proclamation be forwarded to the Director of California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services requesting that the Director find it acceptable in accordance with State Law; that the Governor of California, pursuant to the Emergency Services Act, issue a proclamation declaring an emergency in the City of Clearlake; that the Governor waive regulations that may hinder response and recovery efforts; that recovery assistance be made available under the California Disaster Assistance Act; and that the State expedite access to State and Federal resources and any other appropriate federal disaster relief programs.

DATED: March 13, 2020

_______________________________________
Alan D. Flora
Director of Emergency Services



Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – A new report shows that Lake County’s 2019 winegrape crush and pricing were up.

The release of the 2019 California Grape Crush Report shows the statewide winegrape crush totaled 3,919,146 tons, down 8.4 percent from 2018, and the Lake County crush totaled 47,246 tons, up 2 percent from 2018.

Lake County's flagship variety – Sauvignon Blanc – saw an increase in tons crushed, totaling 15,952 tons, up 15 percent from 2018 (up 12 percent from 2017).

In terms of winegrape pricing, the 2019 statewide average price of all varieties (for non-related purchases) was $830.52, down 5.7 percent from 2018; in Lake County, the average price for all varieties was $1,802.56, more than double the statewide figure, and up 5 percent from 2018.

Pricing for Lake County Cabernet Sauvignon increased by 11 percent over 2018 to $2,474.61 per ton, with Lake County holding its price position at third in the state behind Napa and Sonoma for the past eight years.

The statewide average price for Cabernet Sauvignon was $1,767.37, up 2.5 percent from 2018.

Statewide, red winegrapes totaled 2,157,061 tons crushed, down 11.9 percent from 2018, while white winegrapes totaled 1,762,085 tons, down 3.9 percent from 2018.

In Lake County, red winegrapes totaled 27,507 tons crushed, down 4 percent from 2018, while white winegrapes totaled 19,738 tons, up 10 percent from 2018.

The annual Grape Crush Report is compiled and published by California Department of Food & Agriculture in cooperation with USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service and is available online at www.nass.usda.gov/ca .

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Scotts Valley community residents are invited to attend the Scotts Valley Advisory Council meeting set for Monday, March 23, at 5 p.m., with District 4 Supervisor Tina Scott.

The group meets at the Scotts Valley Women's Club House, 2298 Hendricks Road, Lakeport.

The meeting will begin with an open forum during which people may approach the council and Supervisor Scott with questions and concerns.

Some of the issues on the March 23 agenda include speeding and dumping garbage on Scotts Valley Road, new 8-foot vineyard fence affecting deer crossings and the Natural Resources Conservation Service request for property owners’ information for site visits.

Also to be discussed are the trust fund balance and the fund's purpose, requests to clear Scotts Creek and Water Resources’ use of a drone to map Scotts Creek during March and April.

Formed in February 2017, the Scotts Valley Advisory Council advises the Board of Supervisors on matters relating to the Scotts Valley area, including issues ranging from public health and safety to welfare, public works and planning.

Most parents want to divide their estate equally amongst their children.

What is equal treatment at time of death can be disputed amongst the children when some children have received substantially more in lifetime gifts than the others.

Accordingly, Parents often decide to count substantial lifetime distributions made to their children as advanced distributions against future inheritances.

Equalizing distributions to some children are later made at death to offset (even) the disparity in lifetime advance distributions to other children. For lifetime distributions to count as advances of inheritance certain legal requirements must be satisfied.

In California, section 21135 of the Probate Code provides the following three different scenarios (approaches) in which lifetime distributions are counted as advances of inheritances at death:

1. The instrument provides for deduction of the lifetime gift from the at-death transfer;

2. The transferor declares in a contemporaneous writing that the gift is in satisfaction of the at-death transfer or that its value is to be deducted from the value of the at-death transfer; and

3. The transferee acknowledges in writing that the gift is in satisfaction of the at-death transfer or that its value is to be deducted from the value of the at-death transfer.

Let’s discuss each scenario.

The first scenario, involving the decedent’s estate planning documents, requires that the decedent’s will or trust expressly say that lifetime distributions are to be counted against the decedent’s future inheritance.

This approach may state a specific dollar amount or may refer to a ledger that tracks ongoing lifetime gifting; the ledger approach is often used when a child depends on their parent for ongoing support or for repaying their student loans or mortgage.

The second scenario, involving a contemporaneous written record of the gift, is the subject of the recent appellate court decision in Benita Sachs v. Avram M. Sachs (2020) 44 CA 5th 59.

In Sachs, the deceased father kept track of his monetary gifts to his children on papers he called the “permanent ledger.”

His bookkeeper kept a spreadsheet listing all distributions. The father told his bookkeeper that the list was important so that payments would be deducted from inheritances.

At the father’s death, the son had received $451,027 more in lifetime gifts than the daughter. The son contested the daughter’s request for offsetting (equalizing) distributions based on the permanent ledger.

In Sachs, the appellate court decided that the requirements of section 21135(a)(2) were met.

First, the permanent ledger satisfied the “contemporaneous writing” requirement. Citing earlier case law, the court stated that, “… [n]o special form or even the decedent’s signature is necessary … The writing is in David’s hand and appears to be contemporaneous.”

Second, the court found that the permanent ledger was properly authenticated and admitted into evidence based on the daughter’s testimony that, “… she found the Permanent Record among her father’s papers, and that the record was in her father’s hand … .”

Third, testimony was properly allowed to interpret the records’ meaning.

The third scenario, involving a written acknowledgement by the transferee that the gift is in satisfaction of the at-death transfer, was also found to be satisfied by the court in the Sachs case. That is, the court observed that the son in his emails had stated, “it goes on my record” as the son’s own written acknowledgement that the distributions to him were advancements.

Moreover, the court said that, “… subdivision (a)(3) does not require that the acknowledgment be contemporaneous with the advancement.”

Given the sizable amounts involved, the father’s living trust should also have said that the lifetime distributions he made to the children – as recorded in the permanent ledger – were to be deducted at death from each child’s inheritance. Doing so would have removed any argument over the decedent’s intention in keeping the permanent record.

Advanced lifetime distributions to beneficiaries who are to be treated equally is a thorny and contentious area.

A person’s estate planning documents should say whether any disproportionate lifetime gifting to some beneficiaries is to be offset with equalizing payments to the other beneficiaries at death. Doing so may reduce future disagreement and avoid costly litigation.

Attorney Dennis A. Fordham is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.

On Feb. 18 a new era began in an international effort to improve air quality science and forecasting around the world to help reduce the impact of air pollution on human health and the environment.

The first of three instruments in a pioneering new space-based constellation launched from French Guiana toward an orbit where it will make hourly daytime measurements of several air pollutants.

South Korea's Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer, or GEMS, instrument rocketed into space on the Korean Aerospace Research Institute GEO-KOMPSAT-2B satellite.

From a geostationary, or fixed, orbital location, GEMS will make measurements over Asia. NASA's Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution, or TEMPO, scheduled to launch in 2022 as a payload on Intelsat 40e, will make measurements over North America.

To complete the constellation the European Space Agency, or ESA, Sentinel-4 satellite, expected to launch in 2023, will make measurements over Europe and North Africa.

Once complete, this air quality satellite “virtual constellation” will measure pollutants – including ozone, nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols – in unprecedented detail and frequency.

Air pollution can be damaging to the human respiratory and cardiovascular system and to the environment. Near-real-time data products from the constellation will significantly improve air quality forecasting around the most densely populated areas of the Northern Hemisphere. That data can also help inform decisions by policymakers to improve air quality.

"The GEMS launch was a key step in building an integrated global observing system for air quality, which will give us an unprecedented view of air pollution around the world at higher temporal and spatial scales," said Barry Lefer, tropospheric composition program manager in the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Current satellite instruments that monitor air quality – such as NASA's Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on Aura and ESA's TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument, or TROPOMI, on the Sentinel-5 Precursor, or Sentinel-5P – circle the Earth in sun-synchronous polar orbits that only allow them to make once-daily measurements over any given part of the planet.

First in Orbit: GEMS

That changes now with the launch of GEMS. Nearly identical to TEMPO – both were built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado – GEMS will make detailed hourly daytime measurements that, among other things, will help address concerns around aerosols in South Korea.

Despite decreasing long-term trends in those aerosols, levels are still high. The South Korean public has been concerned about their sources, whether they are produced locally or transported from neighboring countries.

Also of concern in South Korea are increasing levels of ozone. While ozone in the stratosphere filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation, ozone in the layer of the atmosphere closest to Earth's surface, the troposphere, is a significant pollutant.

GEMS will help scientists better monitor ozone and pinpoint the sources of the chemical precursors that give rise to it. The principal investigator for GEMS is Jhoon Kim of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Yonsei University in Seoul.

The GEMS field of view extends well beyond South Korea. It will give researchers better measurements of major pollution hotspots and transport in countries such as India, China and Japan.

Continental U.S., Wall to Wall: TEMPO

Currently in storage at Ball Aerospace awaiting satellite integration, TEMPO will zero in on North America, from Puerto Rico to northern Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, encompassing the entire continental United States.

Some of the specific issues TEMPO will help address include rush-hour pollution in urban and suburban areas; transport of pollution from biomass burning and ozone production; air pollution from oil and gas fields; and ship pollution tracks and drilling platform plumes. These measurements will have implications for air quality forecasting and public health and will improve national pollution inventories.

TEMPO measurements will also have unique research applications. The instrument could be used to measure the extent to which the evaporation of water from corn crops, also known as corn sweat, worsens heat waves and air pollution in the U.S. Midwest. It could also help measure nitrogen dioxide released by farm soil that occurs when it rains soon after the application of fertilizer. Kelly Chance, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the principal investigator for TEMPO.

Scientific possibilities for TEMPO have been explored by some 40 members of the scientific community, as detailed in the TEMPO Green Paper. Several dozen studies and experiments are presented there, including those that use the hourly TEMPO measurements and those that require higher time resolution, as short as 10 minutes.

Air Quality Forecasting for Europe: Sentinel-4

The basic air quality challenges European countries face are much the same as those faced by North American and Asian countries, in particular, high levels of aerosols, nitrogen dioxide and ozone. According to a recent analysis published in the European Heart Journal, air pollution in Europe reduces European average life expectancy in Europe by about two years.

Sentinel 4 is part of Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation program, and its main purpose will be to provide measurement data on a long-term basis to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

This service provides daily forecasts, analyses of past air quality episodes, and trends of atmospheric composition by combining data from satellites and ground-based networks using numerical modeling techniques.

Ben Veihelmann, of the Atmospheric Section of ESA's Earth and Mission Science Division, is the mission scientist for Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5.

ESA is responsible for building the Sentinel-4 instrument, which will be operated by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Two Sentinel-4 instruments will be flown one after the other on the geostationary Meteosat Third Generation Sounder satellites, to cover a total lifetime of 15 years. The launch of the first Sentinel-4 is planned for 2023.

TROPOMI on Sentinel-5P, in orbit since 2017, complements the geostationary constellation by providing atmospheric composition data over regions not covered by those instruments and will help assess and improve the consistency between the data products of GEMS, TEMPO and Sentinel-4.

Data products from all the "virtual constellation" satellite instruments will be freely available to scientists working to better understand air quality, long-range transport of air pollutants, emission source distributions and chemical processes.

Joe Atkinson works for the NASA Langley Research Center.