An unmanned X-37B space plane landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday, wrapping up a record 780 days in orbit, the US Air Force said Sunday. The mission breaks the mysterious plane’s own record by spending more than two years in space.
“The X-37B continues to demonstrate the importance of a reusable space plane,” secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett said in a statement.
Altogether, the program, which has at least two of the reusable planes, has spent 2,865 days in space over the course of five missions, the Air Force said. The fifth mission launched on Sept. 7, 2017.
The Boeing-built space planes resemble a smaller version of NASA’s old space shuttles and have a similar re-entry trajectory that uses a runway, like the old shuttles. They feature a small payload bay and use a deployable solar array for power.
The 11,000-pound vehicle is about 29 feet long with a wingspan of just under 15 feet and was designed to stay in orbit for 270 days. It was originally a NASA program, with roots in the space agency’s lifting-body research, that ran from 1999 to 2004. The X-37B is designed to serve as a platform for experiments and to offer insights on transporting satellite sensors and other equipment to and from space.
The X-37B made its first flight in 2010. A second model took off on its first mission in 2011.
An unmanned X-37B space plane landed Sunday after more than two years in orbit.
Because the program is classified, the Air Force reveals few details about the exact nature of the experiments. The current mission hosted the Air Force Research Laboratory Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, an experiment designed to “test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment,” according to an Air Force statement.
James Webb Space Telescope, successor of 26-year-old Hubble, may find the first galaxies that were formed in the early universe.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States has successfully completed building the largest space telescope — one that is 100 times powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope and may find the first galaxies that were formed in the early universe.
thanks: The Hindu and PTI
dedicated by: Kavignar Thanigai.
The James Webb Space Telescope will be the successor of NASA’s 26-year-old Hubble.
The Webb telescope’s infrared cameras are so sensitive that it needs to be shielded from the rays of the Sun. A five-layer sunshield of the size of a tennis court will prevent the heat from interfering with the telescope’s infrared sensors.
The layers work together to reduce the temperatures between the hot and cold sides of the observatory by about 298 degrees Celsius. Each successive layer of the sunshield, made of kapton, is cooler than the one below.
The space agency has also made the first important optical measurement of James Webb Space Telescope fully assembled primary mirror, called a Center of Curvature test.
“This is the only test of the entire mirror where we can use the same equipment during a before and after test,” said Ritva Keski-Kuha, NASA’s Deputy telescope manager for Webb.
“This test will show if there are any changes or damages to the optical system,” Keski-Kuha said.
The space telescope will provide images of the first galaxies ever formed, and explore planets around distant stars.
It is a joint project of the NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
New NASA programme to protect Earth from asteroids, comets
NASA has started a new programme for detecting and tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs) — comets and asteroids that pass by the Earth’s orbit — to ward off any potential impact threats to our planet.
More than 13,500 near-Earth objects of all sizes have been discovered to date — over 95 per cent of them since NASA-funded surveys began in 1998. About 1,500 NEOs are now detected each year.
The Planetary Defence Coordination Office will take a leading role in coordinating inter-agency and intergovernmental efforts in response to any potential impact threats.
“Asteroid detection, tracking and defence of our planet is something that NASA, its inter-agency partners, and the global community take very seriously,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
“While there are no known impact threats at this time, the 2013 Chelyabinsk super-fireball and the recent ‘Halloween Asteroid’ close approach remind us of why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky,” Grunsfeld said.
In addition to detecting and tracking potentially hazardous objects, the office will issue notices of close passes and warnings of any detected potential impacts, based on credible science data.
“The formal establishment of the Planetary Defence Coordination Office makes it evident that the agency is committed to perform a leadership role in national and international efforts for detection of these natural impact hazards, and to be engaged in planning if there is a need for planetary defence,” said Lindley Johnson, lead programme executive for the office.
Astronomers detect near-Earth objects using ground-based telescopes around the world as well as NASA’s space-based NEOWISE infrared telescope.
Tracking data are provided to a global database maintained by the Minor Planet Centre.
Once detected, orbits are precisely predicted and monitored by the Centre for NEO Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Select NEOs are further characterised by assets such as NASA’s InfraRed Telescope Facility, Spitzer Space Telescope and interplanetary radars operated by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
With more than 90 per cent of NEOs larger than one kilometre already discovered, NASA is now focused on finding objects that are slightly bigger than a football field — 140 metres or larger.
Nasa plans to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa for alien life
Europa is covered by an ice shell perhaps 80 kilometres thick, but underneath this crust is thought to lie a huge ocean of liquid water about 20 kilometres deep
Washington: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is planning to launch a landing probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa by mid-2020s in the hope of discovering alien life on the ocean-harbouring moon.
While the main thrust of the Europa mission, which Nasa aims to launch by the mid-2020s, involves characterising the icy satellite from afar during dozens of flybys, the space agency is considering sending a small probe down to the surface as well.
“We are actively pursuing the possibility of a lander,” Robert Pappalardo, Europa project scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said last week during a panel discussion at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2015 conference in Pasadena.
“Nasa has asked us to investigate: What would it take? How much would it cost? Could we put a small surface package on Europa with this mission?” Pappalardo added.
Nasa has also asked the European Space Agency (ESA) if it would be interested in contributing a lander, ice-penetrating impactor or other piggyback probe to the roughly $2 billion Europa mission, Space.com reported. Europa is covered by an ice shell perhaps 80 kilometres thick, but underneath this crust is thought to lie a huge ocean of liquid water about 20 kilometres deep.
At least five other moons in the solar system are believed to harbour such subsurface seas, Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist at JPL’s Solar System Exploration Directorate, said. However, only the oceans of Enceladus and Europa are likely in contact with the rocky mantle, a scenario that makes all sorts of interesting chemical reactions possible, he added.
The as-yet-unnamed Europa mission could launch as early as 2022. After reaching Jupiter orbit, the robotic probe will perform 45 flybys of Europa over the course of 2.5 years or so.
thanks PTI.
NASA could soon launch landing probe to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa
However, only the oceans of Enceladus and Europa are likely in contact with the rocky mantle, a scenario that makes all sorts of interesting chemical reactions possible, he added.
As per estimates, this icy world has been present for billions of years. This is the closest Nasa has come to admitting there is probably life beyond Earth.
Scientists have had their eyes set on Europa ever since the hypothesis arose that a huge ocean of liquid water, possibly measuring 12 miles deep, might exist beneath the moon’s icy, 80-kilometer thick shell.
At the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Space 2015, JPL project scientist Robert Pappalardo said the agency was “actively persuing” a small lander to piggy back onto the orbiter, including soliciting collaborations with the European Space Agency on a lander or impactor.
Previous descriptions of a Europa mission had outlined a series of fly-bys performed by a NASA probe that would be launched in the mid 2020s. “NASA has asked us to investigate: What would it take?”
According to a report in Space.com, the probe will use as many as nine different ways to study the icy world, including high-resolution cameras, a heat detector and ice-penetrating radar.
“We actually don’t know what the surface of Europa looks like at the scale of this table, at the scale of a lander – if it’s smooth, if it’s incredibly rough, if it’s full of spikes,” Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA’s Washington headquarters, said during a June news conference announcing the mission’s science payload.
At least five other moons in the solar system are believed to harbour such subsurface seas, Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist at JPL’s Solar System Exploration Directorate, said. Now, all that’s left to validate the claim is to focus on the Europa Multiple Flyby Mission, beginning with the most obvious questions that need to be addressed, such as: “What would it take?” and “How much would it cost?”
“Without knowing what the surface even looks like, it’s hard to design a lander that could survive”, he added.
The images show the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth.
From nearly a million miles away, a NASA camera has captured a stunning view of the far side of the moon as it moved in front of the sun-lit side of Earth last month.
The images show the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth.
The lunar far side lacks the large and dark basaltic plains (called maria) that are so prominent on the Earth-facing side.
A thin sliver of shadowed area of moon is visible on its right side.
“It is surprising how much brighter Earth is than the moon. Our planet is a truly brilliant object in dark space compared to the lunar surface,” said said Adam Szabo, project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The images were captured by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite orbiting a million miles from Earth.
EPIC maintains a constant view of the fully-illuminated Earth as it rotates, providing scientific observations of ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in the atmosphere.
The far side of the moon was not seen until 1959 when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft returned the first images.
Since then, several NASA missions have imaged the lunar far side in great detail.
The same side of the moon always faces an earthbound observer because the moon is tidally locked to Earth.
That means its orbital period is the same as its rotation around its axis.
Once EPIC begins regular observations next month, NASA will post daily colour images of Earth to a dedicated public website.
About twice a year, the camera will capture the moon and Earth together as the orbit of DSCOVR crosses the orbital plane of the moon.
With two more Mars orbiters sent into space last year, including India’s MOM probe, traffic has picked up around the red planet – so much so that Nasa has bolstered its traffic monitoring process to avoid spacecraft collisions.The US space agency has beefed up a process of traffic monitoring, communication and manoeuvre planning to ensure that Mars orbiters do not approach each other too closely.
Last year’s addition of two new spacecraft orbiting Mars brought the census of active Mars orbiters to five, the most ever, Nasa said.
Nasa’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission joined the 2003 Mars Express from ESA (the European Space Agency) and two from Nasa: the 2001 Mars Odyssey and the 2006 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The newly enhanced collision-avoidance process also tracks the approximate location of Nasa’s Mars Global
Surveyor, a 1997 orbiter that is no longer working. It’s not just the total number that matters, but also the types of orbits missions use for achieving their science goals.
“Previously, collision avoidance was coordinated between the Odyssey and MRO navigation teams,” said Robert Shotwell, Mars Programme chief engineer at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
“There was less of a possibility of an issue. MAVEN’s highly elliptical orbit, crossing the altitudes of other orbits, changes the probability that someone will need to do a collision-avoidance manoeuvre.
“We track all the orbiters much more closely now. There’s still a low probability of needing a manoeuvre, but it’s something we need to manage,” said Shotwell.
Traffic management at Mars is much less complex than in Earth orbit, where more than 1,000 active orbiters plus additional pieces of inactive hardware add to hazards.
As Mars exploration intensifies, though, and will continue to do so with future missions, precautions are increasing.
The new process was established to manage this growth as new members are added to the Mars orbital community in years to come, Nasa said.
All five active Mars orbiters use the communication and tracking services of Nasa’s Deep Space Network, which is managed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This brings trajectory information together, and engineers can run computer projections of future trajectories out to a few weeks ahead for comparisons.
“It’s a monitoring function to anticipate when traffic will get heavy,” said Joseph Guinn, manager of JPL’s Mission Design and Navigation Section.
“When two spacecraft are predicted to come too close to one another, we give people a heads-up in advance so the project teams can start coordinating about whether any manoeuvres are needed,” said Guinn.
The amount of uncertainty in the predicted location of a Mars orbiter a few days ahead is more than two kilometres.
The planet, which is about 60 per cent bigger than Earth, is located about 1,400 light years away.
Scientists using NASA’s powerful Kepler telescope have found a planet beyond the solar system that is a close match to Earth.
The planet, which is about 60 per cent bigger than Earth, is located about 1,400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, the scientists told a news conference on Thursday.
While similarly sized planets have been found before, the latest one, known as Kepler-452b, is circling a star that is very similar but older than the sun at a distance about the same as Earth’s orbit.
“It’s great progress in finding a planet like Earth that is similar in size and temperature around a sun-like star,” Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, told reporters on a conference call.
Based on its size, scientists believe Kepler-452b is rocky and Earth-like and positioned at the right distance for liquid surface water, which is believed to be necessary for life.
The research will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astronomical Journal.
AS THE NEW Horizons team continues its countdown to the space probe’s closest approach to Pluto on Tuesdaymorning, it continues to release snapshots of the icy rock. Today’s image, taken by the black-and-white LORRI camera, shows four evenly-spaced spots on the side that faces Charon, Pluto’s largest moon.
The team has seen these features before, but the extra detail in this shot is important to the mission’s Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, orbiting around a central point with the same faces always pointing toward each other. That means the dwarf planet’s spotted face will be turned away from New Horizons when it passes by; this is the last time the team will have a chance to see the spots up close.
CHARON’S IMPACT CRATER EMERGES IN LATEST NEW HORIZONS SHOT
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
In the image NASA released of Charon yesterday, astronomers pointed out a collection of vaguely-defined features on the surface of Pluto’s biggest moon. Now, with this latest capture, the New Horizons team has confirmed that the big dent in the icy rock’s surface is in fact an impact crater, surrounded by a couple of deep canyons—one larger than Earth’s Grand Canyon.
Get ready for even more detailed images of Charon and its orbital buddy, Pluto, tomorrow morning when New Horizons makes its closest approach to the system. Geologists will be especially interested to take a closer look at the dark spot on the moon’s northern pole, and the rays of material you can see spraying out from the edges of the crater.
Mars mysteries: Giant plumes, the jelly doughnut and more
Scientists can’t explain cloud-like plumes above surface of the red planet
By Nicholas Misketi, CBC NewsPosted: Feb 18, 2015 5:36 PM ET Last Updated: Feb 19, 2015 9:23 AM ET
A curious plume-like feature was observed on Mars in May 1997 by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is similar to the features detected by amateur astronomers in 2012, although it appeared in a different location. (JPL/NASA/STScI)
Huge cloud-like plumes are just the latest red-planet mystery to captivate our attention.
Scientists still do not know what to make of the plumes, which were spotted almost three years ago.
In an essay this week in the journal Nature, a team of international scientists estimate the plumes rose 250 km above the planet’s surface, covering an area of 1,000 km by 500 km.
But scientists cannot say for sure how the plumes rose or what they are made of.
This anomaly is only one of many from our neighbouring planet that has sparked our earthling curiosity and imagination. Here are five other red-planet mysteries.
The face on Mars
This image, taken by the Viking spacecraft July 31, 1976, shows an apparent face on the surface of Mars. NASA scientists say the image is an optical illusion caused by the angle of the sun. (NASA/Associated Press)
NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft took photographs of a human-like “face” on the planet’s surface in 1976. Ever since, the face on Mars has been talked about in movies, television, radio, and magazines.
While some believed the face was built by aliens, NASA said it was an optical illusion caused by the angle of the sun.
Satellite images taken several years after it was first photographed found the face was actually a natural land form not resembling a face at all.
Martian canals
Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli observed what he believed was a system of channels on Mars in 1877. Many people mistook his labelling of “canali” to mean the waterways had been created by intelligent life. (Giovanni Schiaparelli/Wikimedia Commons)
Astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping and naming areas on Mars in 1877. He saw channels on the planet and labelled them “canali.”
This term was misinterpreted to mean canals and because of this, many people widely believed the planet had intelligent life that created these waterways.
While scientists later debunked this belief, satellite images show the red planet may have once had natural channels containing fast-moving water.
The jelly-doughnut rock
A photo from the panoramic camera of the Mars Opportunity rover shows the “jelly-doughnut” rock that baffled NASA scientists. (NASA)
Early last year, the Mars Opportunity rover baffled NASA scientists when it produced an image that looked like a pastry-shaped object on the planet’s surface.
The photos, taken in the same spot 12 days apart, show the object in the second photo but not in the first. NASA scientist Steve Squires told reporters that it looked like a jelly doughnut.
But the jelly doughnut was actually a rock that NASA scientists believe was likely kicked into the spot as the rover moved around.
Mysterious lights
This image from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover includes a bright spot near the upper left corner. Typical explanations for such spots are cosmic rays or sunlight glinting from rocks. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
UFO conspiracy theorists believed images from NASA’s Curiosity rover showed aliens landing on the red planet.
Mysterious lights appearing in the photos were the proof, according to the conspiracy theorists who expressed their beliefs on social media.
NASA scientists said the so-called lights were in fact stray cosmic rays sometimes seen in space.
Is it a rat or a squirrel?
Is it a rat or a squirrel? The red circle highlights what appears to be a rodent-shaped rock lying between two other rocks. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Some say it looks like a rat. Others say it looks like a squirrel.
In 2012, images from the Curiosity rover showed an orange rodent-shaped rock. Some believed it was an actual rodent hiding among other rocks.
A close-up of the image shows what looks like eyes, a nose, arms, and a sprawled-out body.
But it’s really just another rock.
More Mars photos
Some notable shots captured by the Mars rovers in 2014.
A NASA spacecraft has captured a giant solar filament which appears as a dark line snaked across the lower half of the Sun and is longer than 67 Earths lined up in a row.
An image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on February 10 shows the filament of solar material hovering above the Sun’s surface.
SDO shows colder material as dark and hotter material as light, so the line is, in fact, an enormous swatch of colder material hovering in the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona.
Stretched out, that line — or solar filament as scientists call it — would be more than 857,780 km long. That is longer than 67 Earths lined up in a row, NASA said.
Filaments can float sedately for days before disappearing.
Sometimes they also erupt out into space, releasing solar material in a shower that either rains back down or escapes out into space, becoming a moving cloud known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.
ch of which helps highlight material of different temperatures on the Sun.
By looking at such features in different wavelengths and temperatures, scientists learn more about what causes these structures, as well as what catalyses their occasional eruptions.
Launched on February 11, 2010, SDO is designed to study the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth.
The spacecraft’s long-term measurements give solar scientists in-depth information to help characterise the interior of the Sun, the Sun’s magnetic field, the hot plasma of the solar corona, and the density of radiation that creates the ionosphere of the planets.
Washington: The US space agency has released a stunning video revealing the far side of the Moon that cannot be seen from the Earth. Using data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), NASA’s scientific visualisation studio produced a video of the far side that shows that there are many more and larger craters than on the side which faces the Earth.
What it does not have is large dark spots called maria. Although “dark” is a misnomer, the side of the Moon humans cannot see is illuminated by the Sun in just the same way as the Earth.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been mapping the Moon since 2009. NASA stitched together hundreds of terabytes of data to create the animation.
In 1959, the Soviet Luna 3 probe sent back the first grainy images of the moon’s dark side.
After nine years and a journey of 4.8 billion km, NASA’s New Horizons robotic probe awoke from hibernation on Saturday to begin an unprecedented mission to study the icy dwarf planet Pluto and sibling worlds in its Kuiper Belt home.
A pre-set alarm clock roused New Horizons from its electronic slumber at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), though ground control teams didn’t receive confirmation until just after 9:30 p.m. (0230 GMT on Sunday).
New Horizons is now so far away that radio signals travelling at the speed of light take four hours and 25 minutes to reach Earth.
The scientific observation of Pluto, its entourage of moons and other bodies in the solar system’s frozen backyard begins January 15, program managers said. The closest approach is expected on July 14.
Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy mini-planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune that are believed to be leftover remains from the formation of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. It is the last unexplored region of the solar system.
“It’s hard to underestimate the evolution that’s taking place in our view of the architecture and content of our solar system as a result of the discovery … of the Kuiper Belt,” lead researcher Alan Stern said.
Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been a mystery. Scientists struggled to explain why a planet with a radius of just 740 miles (1,190 km) – about half the width of the United States – could come to exist beyond the giant worlds of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
“We wondered why Pluto was a misfit,” Dr. Stern said.
In 1992, astronomers discovered that Pluto, located about 40 times farther away from the sun than Earth, was not alone in the far reaches of the solar system, prompting the International Astronomical Union to reconsider its definition of “planet.”
In 2006, with New Horizons already on its way, Pluto was stripped of its title as the ninth planet in the solar system and became a dwarf planet, of which more than 1,000 have since been discovered in the Kuiper Belt.
With New Horizons approaching Pluto’s doorstep, scientists are eager for their first close-up look at this unexplored domain.
An artist concept shows Kepler-10c in the foreground, a planet that weighs 17 times as much as Earth and is more than twice as large in size.Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/David Aguilar
NASA and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics just made a discovery that could turn the theory of how planets were created within our universe onto its head.
It all boils down to a giant rocky planet named Kepler-10c.
Kepler-10c inhabits a constellation called Draco, which is about 560 light-years from Earth. It orbits a sun-like star once every 45 days. But, what’s most astonishing about Kepler-10c is its weight. The heavy-set planet is 2.3 times the size of Earth about weighs about 17 times as much as our planet.
This means that Kepler-10c is likely made of rock and other dense solids — something astronomers thought was impossible for a planet this size. Typically mega-planets, like Jupiter and Neptune, snatch hydrogen gas as they grow and become big gassy giants.
“Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, nature gives you a huge surprise — in this case, literally,” Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center Natalie Batalha said in astatement. “Isn’t science marvelous?”
NASA and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced their findings about Kepler-10c on Tuesday saying that scientists are confounded by the rocky mass.
Kepler-10c was discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft — hence its name. The spacecraft has been in hot pursuit of other planets that could support extraterrestrial life for about five years. Last April, NASA announced that Kepler hadflagged more than 2,700 possible planets, 105 of which had been confirmed.
Initially, astronomers weren’t able to calculate Kepler-10c’s weight. But, using a special instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands, scientists were finally able to tally up the planet’s weight, which was far more than they expected.
“We were very surprised when we realized what we had found,” Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Xavier Dumusque said.
So, how does all of this relate to the theory of how planets evolved in the universe? Well, astronomers believe the solar system where Kepler-10c lives is roughly 11 billion years old — forming less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.
Previously, scientists thought the universe wasn’t capable of creating rocky planets with many heavy elements in its early stages. It was believed that mostly only hydrogen and helium existed back then. But, Kepler-10c disproves that theory showing the universe was able to cobble together dense planets shortly after the Big Bang.
This means the possibility of extraterrestrial life could be far more likely — because now even old stars can host Earth-like planets.
“Finding Kepler-10c tells us that rocky planets could form much earlier than we thought,” Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Dimitar Sasselov said in astatement. “And if you can make rocks, you can make life.”
thanks: Google news
dedicated by: Kavignar Thanigai.
Astronomers say the planet may hold water on its surface and is the best candidate yet of a habitable planet in the ongoing search for an Earth twin.
Astronomers have discovered what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet detected a distant, rocky world that’s similar in size to our planet and exists in the Goldilocks zone where it’s not too hot and not too cold for life.
The find, announced on Thursday, excited planet hunters who have been scouring the Milky Way galaxy for years for potentially habitable spots outside our solar system.
“This is the best case for a habitable planet yet found. The results are absolutely rock solid,” University of California, Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy, who had no role in the discovery, said in an email.
The planet was detected by NASA’s orbiting Kepler telescope, which examines the heavens for subtle changes in brightness that indicate an orbiting planet is crossing in front of a star. From those changes, scientists can calculate a planet’s size and make certain inferences about its makeup.
The newfound object, dubbed Kepler-186f, circles a red dwarf star 500 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. A light year is about 9.5 trillion km.
The planet is about 10 per cent larger than Earth and may very well have liquid water a key ingredient for life on its surface, scientists said. That is because it resides at the outer edge of the habitable temperature zone around its star the sweet spot where lakes, rivers or oceans may exist without freezing solid or boiling away.
The planet probably basks in an orange-red glow from its star and is most likely cooler than Earth, with an average temperature slightly above freezing, “similar to dawn or dusk on a spring day,” Mr. Marcy said.
The discovery was detailed in Friday’s issue of the journalScience.
Lead researcher Elisa Quintana at NASA’s Ames Research Centre said she considers the planet to be more of an “Earth cousin” than a twin because it circles a star that is smaller and dimmer than our sun. While Earth revolves around the sun in 365 days, this planet completes an orbit of its star every 130 days.
“You have a birthday every 130 days on this planet,” she said.
Scientists cannot say for certain whether it has an atmosphere, but if it does, it probably contains a lot of carbon dioxide, outside experts said.
“Don’t take off your breathing mask if you ever land there,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, a Harvard and Max Planck Institute astronomer who had no connection to the research.
Despite the differences, “now we can point to a star and know that there really is a planet very similar to the Earth, at least in size and temperature”, Harvard scientist David Charbonneau, who was not part of the team, said in an email.
Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has confirmed 961 planets, but only a few dozen are in the habitable zone. Most are giant gas balls like Jupiter and Saturn, and not ideal places for life. Scientists in recent years have also found planets slightly larger than Earth in the Goldilocks zone called “super Earths,” but it is unclear if they are rocky.
The latest discovery is the closest in size to Earth than any other known world in the habitable region.
Kepler-186f is part of a system of five planets, all of which are roughly Earth’s size. However, the other planets are too close to their star to support life.
Astronomers may never know for certain whether Kepler-186f can sustain life. The planet is too far away even for next-generation space telescopes like NASA’s overbudget James Webb, set for launch in 2018, to study in detail.
Kepler completed its prime mission and was in overtime when one of the wheels that keep its gaze steady failed last year. NASA has not yet decided whether to keep using the telescope to hunt for planets on a scaled-back basis.
Despite NASA’s effort to track it down, there is no evidence for the existence of Planet X, astronomers have revealed.
The hypothetical world that may or may not be orbiting the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto has inspired many a doomsday theory. In the run-up to the much anticipated “Mayan Doomsday” of Dec. 21, 2012, the marauding Planet X was scheduled to make a inner-solar system dash, sparking gravitational mayhem, triggering civilization-ending solar flares.
The hunt for “Planet X” actually has roots in real science. In the mid- to late-19th Century, astronomers were tracking the gravitational perturbations of the gas giant planets in an effort to track down an undiscovered world in the outermost reaches of the solar system — this hypothetical massive planet was dubbed “Planet X.” However, this fascinating trail of discovery ended at the discovery of tiny Pluto in 1930. Lacking the gravitational oomph to explain the gravitational perturbations, it turned out that Pluto wasn’t the Planet X astronomers thought it would be. After the realization that the gravitational perturbations observed were more likely observational error, Planet X became a story of legend.
The idea that the sun may have a stellar partner has also been investigated — perhaps there’s a brown dwarf (a failed star) going unnoticed out there. Nicknamed “Nemesis,” this binary partner could be evading detection.
A few oddities in the outer solar system have given astronomers pause to think that something massive might be lurking out there, however, whether it be a massive planet or sub-standard star. Luhman and his team have analyzed data from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope that carried out a detailed infrared survey of the entire sky from 2010 to 2011. If something big is lurking out there, WISE would easily have spotted it. However, WISE has turned up no Planet X candidate. Previous observations by WISE have also ruled out the Planet X-comet perturbation theory, Discovery News reported.
According to a NASA news release, “no object the size of Saturn or larger exists out to a distance of 10,000 astronomical units (AU), and no object larger than Jupiter exists out to 26,000 AU. One astronomical unit equals 93 million miles. Earth is 1 AU, and Pluto about 40 AU, from the sun.” The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.
The Earth’s galaxy is looking far more crowded. NASA has confirmed 715 newly discovered planets outside the solar system.
Douglas Hudgins, NASA’s exoplanet exploration program scientist, called Wednesday’s announcement a major step toward the planet-hunting Kepler telescope’s ultimate goal — “finding Earth 2.0.”
It’s also a big step in “the possibility of life elsewhere,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, a Harvard and Max Planck Institute astronomer who wasn’t part of the discovery team.
Scientists using the Kepler telescope pushed the number of planets discovered in the galaxy to about 1,700. Twenty years ago, astronomers had not found any planets circling stars other than the ones revolving around the sun.
“We almost doubled just today the number of planets known to humanity,” NASA planetary scientist Jack Lissauer said in a teleconference.
Astronomers used a new confirmation technique to come up with the largest single announcement of a batch of exoplanets what planets outside our solar system are called.
Wednesday’s announcements also were about implications for life behind those big numbers.
All the new planets are in systems like ours where multiple planets circle a star. The 715 planets came from looking at just 305 stars. They were nearly all in size closer to Earth than gigantic Jupiter.
And four of those new exoplanets orbit their stars in “habitable zones” where it is not too hot or not too cold for liquid water which is crucial for life to exist.
The four new habitable zone planets are all at least twice as big as Earth so that makes them more likely to be gas planets instead of rocky ones like Earth and less likely to harbour life.
So far Kepler has found nine exoplanets in the habitable zone, NASA said. Astronomers expect to find more when they look at all four years of data collected by the now-crippled Kepler; so far they have looked at two years.
Planets in the habitable zone are likely to be farther out from their stars because it is hot close in. And planets farther out take more time orbiting, so Kepler has to wait longer to see it again.
Another of Kepler’s latest discoveries indicates that “small planets are extremely common in our galaxy,” said MIT astronomer Sara Seagar, who wasn’t part of the discovery team. “Nature wants to make small planets.”
And, in general, smaller planets are more likely to be able to harbour life than big ones, Ms. Kaltenegger said.
Past missions to Mars include flyby missions like Mariner 7, (NASA), orbiters like Mangalyaan(ISRO), landers like Viking 1 (NASA) and rovers like Curiosity (NASA).Though more than half of all Mars missions have been failures, the mistakes made helped scientists evolve their design and plan future successful missions.
Some missions failed:
Bad Timing: Though the Russian Kosmos 419 (1971) reached Earth’s orbit,it never reached Mars’ orbit because of a wrong ignition time setting. Instead of being set for 1.5 years after launch. The space-craft soon re-entered Earth’s orbit and disintegrated.
Faulty software:
Bad mathematics may not kill you, but they can kill spacecraft! NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter (1998) disintegrated because at one instance, its software used the wrong units (pounds, instead of Newtons). This caused the space craft to be placed too close to Mars where atmospheric stresses destroyed it.
Solar flares and fuel shortage:
The communication systems of Japan’s Nozomi or biter (1998) were disrupted by powerful solar flares. It also damaged the heat control system causing the fuel to freeze. It was unable to attain Mars orbit and operation was terminated.
Nobody really knows:
Just three days away from Mars, all communication was suddenly lost with NASA’s Mars Observer (1992). For months, scientists could not explain what became of the spacecraft,but investigations finally concluded that a fuel and gas leak had probably sent the spacecraft into an uncontrollable spin damaging critical electrical circuits
NASA, Roscosmos Assign Veteran Crew to Year-Long Space Station Mission
WASHINGTON — NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and their international partners have selected two veteran spacefarers for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station in 2015. This mission will include collecting scientific data important to future human exploration of our solar system. NASA has selected Scott Kelly and Roscosmos has chosen Mikhail Kornienko.
Kelly and Kornienko will launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in spring 2015 and will land in Kazakhstan in spring 2016. Kelly and Kornienko already have a connection; Kelly was a backup crew member for the station’s Expedition 23/24 crews, where Kornienko served as a flight engineer.
The goal of their yearlong expedition aboard the orbiting laboratory is to understand better how the human body reacts and adapts to the harsh environment of space. Data from the 12-month expedition will help inform current assessments of crew performance and health and will determine better and validate countermeasures to reduce the risks associated with future exploration as NASA plans for missions around the moon, an asteroid and ultimately Mars.
“Congratulations to Scott and Mikhail on their selection for this important mission,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Their skills and previous experience aboard the space station align with the mission’s requirements. The one-year increment will expand the bounds of how we live and work in space and will increase our knowledge regarding the effects of microgravity on humans as we prepare for future missions beyond low-Earth orbit.”
“Selection of the candidate for the one year mission was thorough and difficult due to the number of suitable candidates from the Cosmonaut corps,” said head of Russian Federal Space Agency, Vladimir Popovkin. “We have chosen the most responsible, skilled and enthusiastic crew members to expand space exploration, and we have full confidence in them.”
Kelly, a captain in the U.S. Navy, is from Orange, N.J. He has degrees from the State University of New York Maritime College and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He served as a pilot on space shuttle mission STS-103 in 1999, commander on STS-118 in 2007, flight engineer on the International Space Station Expedition 25 in 2010 and commander of Expedition 26 in 2011. Kelly has logged more than 180 days in space.
Kornienko is from the Syzran, Kuibyshev region of Russia. He is a former paratrooper officer and graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute as a specialist in airborne systems. He has worked in the space industry since 1986 when he worked at Rocket and Space Corporation-Energia as a spacewalk handbook specialist. He was selected as an Energia test cosmonaut candidate in 1998 and trained as an International Space Station Expedition 8 backup crew member. Kornienko served as a flight engineer on the station’s Expedition 23/24 crews in 2010 and has logged more than 176 days in space.
During the 12 years of permanent human presence aboard the International Space Station, scientists and researchers have gained valuable, and often surprising, data on the effects of microgravity on bone density, muscle mass, strength, vision and other aspects of human physiology. This yearlong stay will allow for greater analysis of these effects and trends.
Kelly and Kornienko will begin a two-year training program in the United States, Russia and other partner nations starting early next year.
http://www.nasa.gov/station
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