LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Mount Konocti Lookout team continues to seek volunteers to help with fire detection this fire season.

A second orientation for volunteers will take place at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 29, at the Kelseyville Fire Protection District Station, 4020 Main St.

This will be the fourth year volunteers have occupied the 45-foot tower eight hours each day from June until the rainy season in October or November.

Volunteers drive their own vehicle to the top of the mountain and climb the stairs to the top of the tower.

If smoke is spotted any time during a watch, it is immediately reported by radio to the Cal Fire station in St. Helena.

Volunteers pick their day of service by checking for openings on an online schedule. A full watch is eight hours, but sometimes four-hour watches can be had.

Those interested in volunteering are asked to contact Jim Adams at 707-245-3771 or Chuck Sturges at 707-349-5311.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has big and little dogs needing homes as the summer season gets started.

Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of boxer, Chihuahua, Doberman Pinscher, German Shepherd, husky, Labrador Retriever, pit bull and shepherd.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

Male Chihuahua

This male Chihuahua has a short tricolor coat.

He’s in kennel No. 2, ID No. 12393.

‘Capulin’

“Capulin” is a male Doberman Pinscher with a short black and brown coat.

He is in kennel No. 4, ID No. 12384.

Female shepherd

This female shepherd has a short black and brown coat.

Shelter staff said she smiles.

She’s in kennel No. 6, ID No. 12343.

‘Houdini’

“Houdini” is a male pit bull with a short black coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 8, ID No. 12386.

‘Koda’

“Koda” is a male German Shepherd-husky mix with a medium-length black and brown coat.

He is in kennel No. 9. ID No. 12406.

‘Tonka’

“Tonka” is a male boxer mix with a short black and white coat.

He’s in kennel No. 10, ID No. 12437.

‘Beau’

“Beau” is a male shepherd with a medium-length black coat.

He has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 14, ID No. 6745.

Doberman Pinscher

This young male Doberman Pinscher has a short black and brown coat.

He’s in kennel No. 16, ID No. 12374.

Female boxer

This female boxer has a short brown and white coat.

She already has been spayed.

She is in kennel No. 19, ID No. 12326.

‘Nikkie’

“Nikkie” is a female pit bull terrier with a short black coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 20, ID No. 12369.

Male Chihuahua

This male Chihuahua has a short tan coat.

He is in kennel No. 21, ID No. 12397.

Female Doberman Pinscher

This female Doberman Pinscher has a short black and brown coat.

She is in kennel No. 22, ID No. 12385.

‘Jack’

“Jack” is a male German Shepherd with a medium-length black and brown coat.

He’s in kennel No. 24, ID No. 12376.

Male pit bull

This male pit bull has a short brown coat.

He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. 12355.

Male German Shepherd

This male German Shepherd has a short black and tan coat.

He’s in kennel No. 30, ID No. 12314.

Female pit bull

This female pit bull has a short brown coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 32, ID No. 12383.

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

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.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – A strong Saturday night earthquake in Humboldt County was felt by thousands of North Coast residents – including some in Lake County – and followed by several hours a cluster of quakes that occurred off the Oregon coast.

The 5.6-magnitude quake occurred at 8:57 p.m. Saturday 17 miles southwest of Scotia and 36 miles south of Eureka at a depth of five and a half miles, according to the United States Geological Survey.

As of 2 a.m. Sunday, the survey had received more than 2,500 shake reports, the majority from around the North Coast but also some from Clearlake Oaks and Lakeport, and some from further south in California.

The 5.6-magnitude quake occurred approximately 30 minutes after a 3.3-magnitude quake that the US Geological Survey said also was located 17 miles southwest of Scotia at a depth of five and a half miles.

From 6 to 7:30 a.m. Saturday, nine quakes occurred off the Oregon coast and were centered about 200 miles west of Bandon, the US Geological Survey said.

That cluster of ocean quakes included two magnitude 5.4 quakes, one 5-magnitude quake, and six others measuring between 3.1 and 4.7 on the Richter Scale, based on survey records.

US Geological Survey mapping showed that the Humboldt County quakes appeared to be on the edge of the North American Plate. Most of the Oregon quakes – including the three largest – were in the Blanco Fracture Zone on the Juan De Fuca Plate, with three of the smaller quakes on the other size of the fracture zone on the Pacific Plate.

The Juan De Fuca Plate is moving east-northeast and under the North American continent. The subduction between that plate and the continent has the potential to generate huge earthquakes and tsunamis, according to a 2017 report from UC Santa Barbara.

The report explains that Juan De Fuca plate’s region “represents the single greatest geophysical hazard to the continental United States; quakes centered here could register as hundreds of times more damaging than even a big temblor on the San Andreas Fault.”

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.

The sun is why we’re here. It’s also why Martians or Venusians are not.

When the sun was just a baby four billion years ago, it went through violent outbursts of intense radiation, spewing scorching, high-energy clouds and particles across the solar system.

These growing pains helped seed life on early Earth by igniting chemical reactions that kept Earth warm and wet.

Yet, these solar tantrums also may have prevented life from emerging on other worlds by stripping them of atmospheres and zapping nourishing chemicals.

Just how destructive these primordial outbursts were to other worlds would have depended on how quickly the baby sun rotated on its axis. The faster the sun turned, the quicker it would have destroyed conditions for habitability.

This critical piece of the sun’s history, though, has bedeviled scientists, said Prabal Saxena, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Saxena studies how space weather, the variations in solar activity and other radiation conditions in space, interacts with the surfaces of planets and moons.

Now, he and other scientists are realizing that the moon, where NASA will be sending astronauts by 2024, contains clues to the ancient mysteries of the sun, which are crucial to understanding the development of life.

“We didn’t know what the sun looked like in its first billion years, and it’s super important because it likely changed how Venus’ atmosphere evolved and how quickly it lost water. It also probably changed how quickly Mars lost its atmosphere, and it changed the atmospheric chemistry of Earth,” Saxena said.

The sun-moon connection

Saxena stumbled into investigating the early sun’s rotation mystery while contemplating a seemingly unrelated one: Why, when the Moon and Earth are made of largely the same stuff, is there significantly less sodium and potassium in lunar regolith, or moon soil, than in Earth soil?

This question, too, revealed through analyses of Apollo-era moon samples and lunar meteorites found on Earth, has puzzled scientists for decades – and it has challenged the leading theory of how the moon formed.

Our natural satellite took shape, the theory goes, when a Mars-sized object smashed into Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. The force of this crash sent materials spewing into orbit, where they coalesced into the moon.

“The Earth and moon would have formed with similar materials, so the question is, why was the moon depleted in these elements?” said Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard who researches the effect of space weather on planetary atmospheres and exospheres.

The two scientists suspected that one big question informed the other – that the history of the sun is buried in the moon’s crust.

Killen’s earlier work laid the foundation for the team’s investigation. In 2012, she helped simulate the effect solar activity has on the amount of sodium and potassium that is either delivered to the moon’s surface or knocked off by a stream of charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, or by powerful eruptions known as coronal mass ejections.

Saxena incorporated the mathematical relationship between a star’s rotation rate and its flare activity. This insight was derived by scientists who studied the activity of thousands of stars discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope: The faster a star spins, they found, the more violent its ejections.

“As you learn about other stars and planets, especially stars like our Sun, you start to get a bigger picture of how the Sun evolved over time,” Saxena said.

Using sophisticated computer models, Saxena, Killen and colleagues think they may have finally solved both mysteries. Their computer simulations, which they described on May 3 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that the early sun rotated slower than 50 percent of baby stars.

According to their estimates, within its first billion years, the Sun took at least 9 to 10 days to complete one rotation.

They determined this by simulating the evolution of our solar system under a slow, medium, and then a fast-rotating star. And they found that just one version – the slow-rotating star – was able to blast the right amount of charged particles into the moon’s surface to knock enough sodium and potassium into space over time to leave the amounts we see in moon rocks today.

“Space weather was probably one of the major influences for how all the planets of the solar system evolved,” Saxena said, “so any study of habitability of planets needs to consider it.”

Life under the early sun

The rotation rate of the early Sun is partly responsible for life on Earth. But for Venus and Mars – both rocky planets similar to Earth – it may have precluded it. (Mercury, the closest rocky planet to the sun, never had a chance.)

Earth’s atmosphere was once very different from the oxygen-dominated one we find today. When Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, a thin envelope of hydrogen and helium clung to our molten planet. But outbursts from the young sun stripped away that primordial haze within 200 million years.

As Earth’s crust solidified, volcanoes gradually coughed up a new atmosphere, filling the air with carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen.

Over the next billion years, the earliest bacterial life consumed that carbon dioxide and, in exchange, released methane and oxygen into the atmosphere.

Earth also developed a magnetic field, which helped protect it from the sun, allowing our atmosphere to transform into the oxygen- and nitrogen-rich air we breathe today.

“We were lucky that Earth’s atmosphere survived the terrible times,” said Vladimir Airapetian, a senior Goddard heliophysicist and astrobiologist who studies how space weather affects the habitability of terrestrial planets. Airapetian worked with Saxena and Killen on the early sun study.

Had our Sun been a fast rotator, it would have erupted with super flares 10 times stronger than any in recorded history, at least 10 times a day. Even Earth's magnetic field wouldn't have been enough to protect it.

The Sun's blasts would have decimated the atmosphere, reducing air pressure so much that Earth wouldn’t retain liquid water. “It could have been a much harsher environment,” Saxena noted.

But the Sun rotated at an ideal pace for Earth, which thrived under the early star. Venus and Mars weren’t so lucky.

Venus was once covered in water oceans and may have been habitable. But due to many factors, including solar activity and the lack of an internally generated magnetic field, Venus lost its hydrogen – a critical component of water.

As a result, its oceans evaporated within its first 600 million years, according to estimates. The planet’s atmosphere became thick with carbon dioxide, a heavy molecule that's harder to blow away. These forces led to a runaway greenhouse effect that keeps Venus a sizzling 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), far too hot for life.

Mars, farther from the Sun than Earth is, would seem to be safer from stellar outbursts. Yet, it had less protection than did Earth. Due partly to the Red Planet’s weak magnetic field and low gravity, the early Sun gradually was able to blow away its air and water.

By about 3.7 billion years ago, the Martian atmosphere had become so thin that liquid water immediately evaporated into space. (Water still exists on the planet, frozen in the polar caps and in the soil.)

After influencing the course for life (or lack thereof) on the inner planets, the aging Sun gradually slowed its pace and continues to do so. Today, it revolves once every 27 days, three times slower than it did in its infancy. The slower spin renders it much less active, though the Sun still has violent outbursts occasionally.

Exploring the moon, witness of solar system evolution

To learn about the early sun, Saxena said, you need to look no further than the moon, one of the most well-preserved artifacts from the young solar system.

“The reason the moon ends up being a really useful calibrator and window into the past is that it has no annoying atmosphere and no plate tectonics resurfacing the crust,” he said. “So as a result, you can say, ‘Hey, if solar particles or anything else hit it, the moon’s soil should show evidence of that.’”

Apollo samples and lunar meteorites are a great starting point for probing the early solar system, but they are only small pieces in a large and mysterious puzzle. The samples are from a small region near the lunar equator, and scientists can’t tell with complete certainty where on the moon the meteorites came from, which makes it hard to place them into geological context.

Since the South Pole is home to the permanently shadowed craters where we expect to find the best-preserved material on the moon, including frozen water, NASA is aiming to send a human expedition to the region by 2024.

If astronauts can get samples of lunar soil from the Moon’s southernmost region, it could offer more physical evidence of the baby sun’s rotation rate, said Airapetian, who suspects that solar particles would have been deflected by the Moon’s erstwhile magnetic field 4 billion years ago and deposited at the poles: “So you would expect — though we’ve never looked at it — that the chemistry of that part of the Moon, the one exposed to the young Sun, would be much more altered than the equatorial regions. So there’s a lot of science to be done there."

Lonnie Shekhtman and Miles Hatfield work for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. – Mendocino National Forest officials said the growth rate on the East fire in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness has picked up.

On Saturday, the fire had grown to 325 acres, with zero containment, forest officials reported. The fire has grown by more than 100 acres since Friday.

Forest officials said moderate north winds Friday night kept the East fire fairly active until 2 a.m.

To the southeast, the Haynes fire is estimated at 23 acres and 90 percent contained.

The fires started June 17 approximately 23 miles northeast of Covelo in Trinity County.

There are 145 personnel working on these fires including smokejumpers, hotshot crews, wildland fire modules, helicopters and support personnel.

On the East fire, crews are working to guide the fire southward toward the Middle Fork Eel River inside the designated confinement area.

The confinement area is between East Ridge, Buck Ridge and Wrights Ridge and totals about 1,000 acres in size.

On the Haynes fire, crews plan to extinguish burning logs and vegetation near the containment lines. As the work needed on this fire diminishes, personnel will be released to be available for other assignments.

Incident Commander Trainee Terry Nickerson said after Friday’s helicopter flight, “We observed low to moderate activity on the fire which is helping reduce snags and debris in the wilderness in a natural way. We feel this is a great opportunity to manage this incident, at this time and in this location to improve forest health and reduce exposure and risk to fire personnel.”

Nickerson added, “The fire is burning exactly as we want it to.”

The weather forecast shows north winds from 7 to 12 miles per hour and temperatures in the 70s with a cooling trend early next week.

Wilderness hikers are asked to avoid travel near Buck Ridge and Wrights Ridge.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – Spirits were high on Friday at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma where thousands gathered to cheer for the next pup to win the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest.

It was a close call as the judges called upon the crowd to help them decide and Scamp The Tramp prevailed.

“Scamp defines ugly with cute, winning all of our hearts. Let’s all paws for a moment and celebrate the World’s Ugliest Dog: Scamp!” shared long-time returning judge Kerry Sanders, NBC News correspondent.

Scamp The Tramp was rescued by his fur mommy, Yvonne Morones back in 2014. This is a story of an online swipe right and love at first sight.

Morones discovered Scamp on Pet Finder and immediately melted. It was near his last hour when she pulled in and saved his life.

“It was on the way home that I knew I made the right choice. There we were, two strangers in a car on the way home to a new start. Bob Marley was playing ‘One Love’ and I looked over and little Scamp was bobbing his head. It was like he knew he had found his forever home,” said Morones.

Scamp and Morones are being flown to New York for a live appearance on NBC's Today Show scheduled to air Monday, June 24, during the 8 a.m. hour.

Her prize included a very large trophy, $1,500 and a donated prize match which will be split between the Humane Society of Sonoma County, Angels Fund and Compassion Without Borders.

This is just one of the amazing stories shared with the world at Friday night’s event.

Scamp competed against 18 other dogs, most of which were also adopted or rescued.

The red carpet runners up included second place winner Wild Thang, owned by Ann Lewis and third place winner Tostito, owned by Molly Horgan who also won the Spirit Award.

This year’s People’s Choice Award went to Meatloaf, owned by Denae Pruner.

This year’s presenting sponsor, Amica Insurance was very excited to be involved and provide the funds for the matching gift to support non-profits important to the contestant winners.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake Police Department reported that its officers rescued a young woman who was the victim of human trafficking, arrested one of the men who held her captive and are seeking the second.

Javier Alvarez, 38, Hopland, was arrested on Thursday, police said.

At 9:50 a.m. Thursday Clearlake Police officers responded to the 15700 block of 41st Avenue on a report of a person being held against their will, and located a 21-year-old female with minor injuries.

While officers were speaking with the victim, the suspect vehicle was spotted by officers. The two men in the vehicle abandoned it and fled on foot.

Police said that, after an extensive search by officers, they found Alvarez hiding in a backyard in the 15800 block of 45th Avenue and took him into custody.

The second man was not located and remains outstanding.

Police said the second subject has not yet been positively identified but may have the first name of "Armondo."

He is described as an older Hispanic male adult, approximately 6 feet tall, with salt and pepper gray hair and having a thin build. He was last seen wearing a tan and brown flannel type shirt.

Based on the information known at this time, it appears the victim was lured to the area under false pretenses for work.

Police said that, once in the area, the victim was held against her will and physically abused by the suspects over the past week. She was able to contact law enforcement when she was left alone briefly.

Alvarez was arrested on probable cause for numerous felony charges including human trafficking, robbery, false imprisonment and assault.

He is being held on $150,000 bail and is set to be arraigned in Lake County Superior Court on Monday, according to Lake County Jail booking records.

This case is still under investigation. Anyone with information is urged to contact Officer Daniel Eagle at 707-994-8251, Extension 518.

If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, help is available. If you are in immediate danger, call 911, otherwise, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888. For more information, visit https://humantraffickinghotline.org .

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Ladies of the Lake Quilt Guild invites entries for its 18th annual Falling Leaves Quilt Show.

The show will be held Saturday, Oct. 5, and Sunday, Oct. 6.

Entry forms are now available online at http://www.llqg.org/quilt-show.html .

The Web site includes all the information needed to enter quilts and other items in the show.

The deadline for submitting entries is Aug. 10. There is no limit on the number of items you may enter but each quilt or other item entered must have it's own entry form.

Now is the time to get those unfinished pieces completed for the show. Perhaps they need to be quilted or have a binding or a sleeve attached.

With more than 20 categories, there is a place for that special item you have waiting to be displayed.

One does not need to be a member of the guild to enter quilts. There is a need for quilts of all sizes as well as vignettes. Vignettes are small items such as baby quilts, doll quilts, table runners, placemats, garments, totes/purses or small wall hangings.

Quilters may choose to have their quilts or vignettes judged or enter quilts and vignettes without judging. Many quilters find it beneficial to have their quilts judged, learning much from an impartial evaluation. The judges are very positive and will award ribbons in every category.

The 18th annual Falling Leaves Quilt Show will be held at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Lakeport. The hours on Saturday are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The guild welcomes all quilters, prospective quilters, and quilt lovers to its meetings and events.

For more information about the quilt guild, contact Terry Phelps at 707-274-1855 or visit the Ladies of the Lake Quilt Guild Web site at www.LLQG.org .

As California continues to grapple with climate change and wildfires that are increasingly dangerous and destructive, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday released a progress report on recommendations laid out in his administration’s 60 Day Strike Force report.

In April, the Governor’s Strike Force charged with examining California’s catastrophic wildfires laid out five key areas where focus is needed:

– Catastrophic wildfire prevention and response;
– Mitigating climate change through clean energy policies;
– Fair allocation of catastrophic wildfire damages;
– A more effective California Public Utilities Commission with the tools to manage a changing utility market;
– Holding Pacific Gas and Electric accountable and building a utility that prioritizes safety.

The progress report released today shows the state’s progress in all of these areas and provides guidance on how the state can build a safe, reliable and affordable energy future – one that continues the state’s progress towards achieving its climate change goals.

“Climate change has created a new reality in the State of California. It’s not a question of ‘if’ wildfire will strike, but ‘when,’” said Gov. Newsom in the report’s introduction. “Our recent, terrifying history bears that out. Fifteen of the 20 most destructive wildfires in the state’s history have occurred since 2000 and 10 of the most destructive fires have occurred since 2015. Wildfires don’t discriminate – they are a rural, suburban and urban danger. We all have an individual responsibility to step up and step in for our communities as we confront new and growing threats.”

Newsom added, “My administration has welcomed support and guidance from the Legislature in crafting a framework around issues like power company accountability, wildfire safety investments and reform of the California Public Utilities Commission. In the coming days, I will continue working with the Legislature to turn this framework into a package of bills that make the changes we need.”

Gov. Newsom has made wildfire prevention and mitigation a top priority since taking office. The governor proactively declared a state of emergency to fast-track 35 critical forest-management projects to protect more than 200 of California’s highest-risk communities, redirected National Guard members from the border to undertake fire prevention activities throughout the state.

The governor also included $1 billion in additional funding in the state budget to enhance our state’s preparedness and expand our capacity to respond to emergencies.

During his State of the State Address, the governor announced the creation of a Strike Force to develop a comprehensive strategy within 60 days, to address the destabilizing effects of catastrophic wildfires on California’s energy future.

The full progress report can be seen below.

062119 Strike Force Progress Report by LakeCoNews on Scribd

NASA has selected two new missions to advance our understanding of the sun and its dynamic effects on space.

One of the selected missions will study how the sun drives particles and energy into the solar system and a second will study Earth’s response.

The sun generates a vast outpouring of solar particles known as the solar wind, which can create a dynamic system of radiation in space called space weather.

Near Earth, where such particles interact with our planet’s magnetic field, the space weather system can lead to profound impacts on human interests, such as astronauts’ safety, radio communications, GPS signals, and utility grids on the ground.

The more we understand what drives space weather and its interaction with the Earth and lunar systems, the more we can mitigate its effects – including safeguarding astronauts and technology crucial to NASA’s Artemis program to the Moon.

“We carefully selected these two missions not only because of the high-class science they can do in their own right, but because they will work well together with the other heliophysics spacecraft advancing NASA’s mission to protect astronauts, space technology and life down here on Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These missions will do big science, but they’re also special because they come in small packages, which means that we can launch them together and get more research for the price of a single launch.”

PUNCH

The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission will focus directly on the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, and how it generates the solar wind.

Composed of four suitcase-sized satellites, PUNCH will image and track the solar wind as it leaves the Sun.

The spacecraft also will track coronal mass ejections – large eruptions of solar material that can drive large space weather events near Earth – to better understand their evolution and develop new techniques for predicting such eruptions.

These observations will enhance national and international research by other NASA missions such as Parker Solar Probe, and the upcoming European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter, due to launch in 2020.

PUNCH will be able to image, in real time, the structures in the solar atmosphere that these missions encounter by blocking out the bright light of the Sun and examining the much fainter atmosphere.

Together, these missions will investigate how the star we live with drives radiation in space. PUNCH is led by Craig DeForest at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Including launch costs, PUNCH is being funded for no more than $165 million.

TRACERS

The second mission is Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, or TRACERS.

The TRACERS investigation was partially selected as a NASA-launched rideshare mission, meaning it will be launched as a secondary payload with PUNCH.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is emphasizing secondary payload missions as a way to obtain greater science return.

TRACERS will observe particles and fields at the Earth’s northern magnetic cusp region – the region encircling Earth’s pole, where our planet’s magnetic field lines curve down toward Earth.

Here, the field lines guide particles from the boundary between Earth’s magnetic field and interplanetary space down into the atmosphere.

In the cusp area, with its easy access to our boundary with interplanetary space, TRACERS will study how magnetic fields around Earth interact with those from the sun.

In a process known as magnetic reconnection, the field lines explosively reconfigure, sending particles out at speeds that can approach the speed of light. Some of these particles will be guided by the Earth’s field into the region where TRACERS can observe them.

Magnetic reconnection drives energetic events all over the universe, including coronal mass ejections and solar flares on the Sun. It also allows particles from the solar wind to push into near-Earth space, driving space weather there.

TRACERS will be the first space mission to explore this process in the cusp with two spacecraft, providing observations of how processes change over both space and time.

The cusp vantage point also permits simultaneous observations of reconnection throughout near-Earth space. Thus, it can provide important context for NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which gathers detailed, high-speed observations as it flies through single reconnection events at a time.

TRACERS’ unique measurements will help with NASA’s mission to safeguard our technology and astronauts in space. The mission is led by Craig Kletzing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Not including rideshare costs, TRACERS is funded for no more than $115 million.

Launch date for the two missions is no later than August 2022. Both programs will be managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The Explorers Program, the oldest continuous NASA program, is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the work of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in astrophysics and heliophysics.

The program is managed by Goddard for the Science Mission Directorate, which conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system and the universe.

For more information about the Explorers Program, visit https://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov .

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Mendocino National Forest officials said growth is slowing on the lightning-caused East fire burning in the Yolla Bolly Wilderness.

As of late Friday morning, the East fire had burned 200 acres with little growth reported.

To the southeast, the Haynes fire is estimated at 23 acres and 80 percent contained, officials said.

The fires started June 17 approximately 23 miles northeast of Covelo in Trinity County.

Forest officials said there are 145 personnel working on these fires including smokejumpers, hotshot crews, wildland fire modules, helicopters and support personnel.

On the East fire, crews will continue to reinforce a designated confinement area between East Ridge, Buck Ridge and Wrights Ridge as the fire moves southward. Officials said crews on the Haynes fire plan to extinguish burning logs and vegetation near the containment lines.

During the Friday morning briefing, Agency Administrator Frank Aebly thanked the crews for protecting wilderness values and having a light impact on the land while they work on the two fires.

Crews are using minimum impact suppression tactics or MIST such as using natural barriers where possible, moving or rolling material out of the intended confinement area, reducing the amount of trees cut and minimizing fireline construction.

The weather forecast for Friday into Saturday includes a red flag warning with strong winds for the northern Sacramento Valley below 2,000 feet.

The gusty winds in the valley are not expected to occur on the East and Haynes fires during this wind event.

For the fire area, the weather forecast shows temperatures in the mid-60s with north winds from 11 to 18 miles per hour.

Wilderness hikers are asked to avoid travel near Buck Ridge and Wrights Ridge.

Maps and photos are available at https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6394/ .

State Sen. Mike McGuire honored and celebrated Upper Lake High School student and state wrestling champion Adriana Lopez during a ceremony on the California State Senate Floor Thursday morning.

Lopez isn’t just the top female wrestler in her weight class in the Golden State – she is a trailblazer.

She made school history by being the first student to ever hold a state title across any sport from Upper Lake High and she is the first-ever student to hold a state title from the entire county of Lake.

“She’s fierce, wicked smart, crushes the competition and she has made California proud. We congratulate her on her success, and wish her the best as she heads to college this fall to continue to compete with the best,” Sen. McGuire said.

She was joined in the Senate ceremony by her father Joe Fernandez – who also is her wrestling coach – and her mother, Jamie.

This spring, Lopez won the California Interscholastic Federation Girls’ Wrestling State Championship in the 121-pound division, making her the top female wrestler in California in her weight class.

She was previously a state wrestling medalist, having placed third in the 2018 CIF Girls’ Wrestling State Championship, and she wasn’t going to accept anything but the top spot in her senior year.

Lopez was also the first Coastal Mountain Conference state champion in wrestling.

Lopez has received a combined athletic and academic scholarship to attend Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky, where she will both wrestle and pursue a career in nursing.