The camera, installed by the U.S. Geological Survey, looks over the Arroyo Seco, a usually dry riverbed on the east side of JPL property. The Lab, in addition to the National Weather Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and first responders will be monitoring the images for large pulses of water and debris, which could damage surrounding areas.

The public can also watch the current state of the stream in real-time at http://ca.water.usgs.gov/webcams/jpl/ . New images appear every five minutes, and users can control the camera for up to three minutes at a time.

The Station fire, as it's known, charred more than 160,000 acres in and around the San Gabriel Mountains and crept to within an eighth of a mile of JPL in late August 2009. Rains this month caused mudslides on slopes burned bare by the fire and damaged homes in areas not far from JPL. Mudslides and debris flows could potentially threaten foothill communities for years to come.

The U.S. Geological Survey approached Eric Fuller, JPL's emergency preparedness administrator, after he attended a meeting with geologists, fire officials, land managers and other stakeholders. The Survey installed the camera in early February, and JPL has provided electrical power and a network line.

"Though we haven't had any damage at JPL, we want to be prepared and we want everyone else to be, as well," Fuller said.

The webcam is part of JPL's ongoing interest in studying the effects of the Station fire. Shortly after the most intense part of the wildfire, Tom Farr, a geologist at JPL, began working with researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the Survey and Arizona State University, Tempe, to study how sediment is moving on scorched hillsides around the Arroyo.

Farr, who has jogged regularly through the area for more than 20 years, now uses the daily runs for field work. His photos show log jams, erosion around guard rails and displaced boulders. He has also noted that in some places streams have flowed into old channels and others have broken off pavement from the roads. He also checks rain rates recorded by the JPL weather station, available at http://weatherstation.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

"The Arroyo Seco is almost unrecognizable from before the fires," Farr said. "A huge amount of sediment has been deposited and in some places eroded during the last few storms. We'll want to keep watching."

The image exposes the irregular shape and circular surface scars on Prometheus, pointing to a violent history. These craters are probably the remnants from impacts long ago.

Prometheus is one of Saturn's innermost moons. It orbits the gas-giant at a distance of about 140,000 kilometers (86,000 miles) and is 86 kilometers (53 miles) across at its widest point. The porous, icy world was originally discovered in images taken by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft back in 1980.

Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured two black-and-white images of the moon on Dec. 26, 2009, and the imaging team combined the images to make this new stereo view. It looks different from the "egg-cellent" raw image of Prometheus obtained on Jan. 27 because that view shows one of the short ends of the oddly shaped moon. In this 3-D image, the sun illuminates Prometheus at a different angle, making the moon's elongated body visible.

The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. For more information about the Cassini Equinox Mission visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

View my blog's last three great articles....

View my blog's last three great articles....

Sunday landing opportunities at Kennedy are at 10:16 p.m. and 11:51 p.m. EST. There are additional opportunities at 1:20 a.m. and 2:55 a.m. EST Monday at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., a backup landing site. For recorded updates about landing, call 321-867-2525.

If Endeavour lands Sunday in Florida as scheduled, NASA officials will hold a briefing to discuss the mission no earlier than midnight. The participants will be:
- Mike Moses, space shuttle launch integration manager
- Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director

After touchdown, the astronauts will undergo routine physical examinations and meet with their families. Because of the late hour, the crew will not participate in a post-landing news conference, but a crew statement from the runway is expected. The news events will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's Web site.

The Kennedy news center will open for landing activities at 6 p.m. Sunday and remain open through Monday. The STS-130 media badges are in effect through landing. The media accreditation building on State Road 3 will be open Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The last bus will depart from the news center for the Shuttle Landing Facility one hour before landing.

If the landing is diverted to Edwards, news media should call the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center public affairs office at 661-276-3449. Dryden has limited facilities available for previously accredited journalists.

The NASA News Twitter feed is updated throughout the shuttle mission and landing. To follow, visit:

The STS-130 mission to the International Space Station included three spacewalks and the installation of the Tranquility node, a module that provides additional room for crew members and many of the space station's life support and environmental control systems. Attached to Tranquility is a cupola with seven windows that offers a panoramic view of Earth, celestial objects and visiting spacecraft. Tranquility and its cupola are the final major U.S. portions of the station. The orbiting laboratory now is approximately 90 percent complete in terms of mass.

George Zamka commanded the flight and was joined on the mission by Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken. A welcome ceremony for the astronauts will be held Monday, Feb. 22, in Houston. The public is invited to attend the 4 p.m. CST event at Ellington Field's NASA Hangar 990.

Highlights from the ceremony will be broadcast on NASA Television's Video File. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:

For more about the STS-130 mission and the upcoming STS-131 flight, visit: