The Solar Probe Plus will plunge directly into the Sun’s atmosphere to learn why it’s so much hotter than our star’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind. View full post on Astronomy.com – News
Hubblecast 29: Mission Accomplished – Healing Hubble. The fifth and final mission to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope was a long time coming. After a delay in the fall of 2008, spring brought new hope and, on 11 May, the seven Space Shuttle crew members headed for the mission of a lifetime. — Subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com • www.YouTube.com — Credits: • ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser, Colleen Sharkey & Lars Lindberg Christensen) • Visual design & Editing: Martin Kornmesser • Web Hosting: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ) • Web Technical Support: Lars Holm Nielsen & Raquel Yumi Shida • Written by: Colleen Sharkey & Lars Lindberg Christensen • Narration: Gaitee Hussain • Music: John Dyson from the CD darklight • STS-125 footage & still images: NASA • ESA HST team still photos: ESA/Lothar Gerlach & ESA/Colleen Sharkey • Directed by: Colleen Sharkey & Lars Lindberg Christensen Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre Garching/Munich, Germany • www.eso.org • http • hubblesite.org .
Japanese probe Hayabusa (MUSES-C) and its mission to asteroid Itokawa.
Plans for sending humans to visit an asteroid are heating up, with one company already studying how to rework Orion spaceships into deep space cruisers.
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March 6th the hunt for life in Space started a new era.
NASA’s Kepler Mission Rockets into Space in Search of Other Earths
NASA’s Kepler mission successfully launched
NASA launched its new space telescope called Kepler on March 6th 2009 and will attempt to bring the human race a step closer to the eternal question – are we alone?
It is an historical project as we can be able to get new perspectives on human life itself.
Some fundamental questions will be attacked in this mission that has been part of human quest for a long time, ever since the humans began to look up into the sky and see the world of stars above our heads.
Measuring extreme low changes in strength of light, will enable the telescope to find habitats similar to our earth in space.
Researchers believe strongly that there are billions of planets like ours within our own Milky way system. Some of these may have the potential of life.
Kepler telescope will look for earth like planets in a distance from the sun, similar to the distance earth has. In this zone of interest there will be potential for water, which again will give raise to potential of sustainable life as we know it. The larger amount of planets similar to ours, the larger chance there is for finding life forms.
Kepler is looking out for small objects in a distance of over three thousand light years, which is really hard to grasp for human mind. It is a large distance, and the objects we are looking for, are very small. Kepler has the ability to detect these small objects at these distances due to its high sensitivity of the equipment onboard.
On of the researchers on the Kepler team, William Borucki, said they will not be able to find E.T himself, but maybe find his home. Maybe in the future it will be possible to establish whether these objects have life on them, and observe its activities. However, at the moment, we do not have the technology to determine this.
As long as we receive light from these planets, we will be able to analyze and observe chemical substances and look for signatures of life.
The first exo planet in orbit around another star was discovered first time in 1995 and there has been found another 342 new ones since then. However, most of these giant planets are made of only gas, like our own Jupiter and Saturn, and they are extremely hot. None of these are believed to be like our planet. These objects are different from our earth planet, and can not have life as we know about from our knowledge at this moment. These objects are very close to their star, and are probably being fried by their sun.
Technology has not enabled us so far to detect other objects than these 341 ones, and its not s sign of that there are not objects like our earth present in these regions.
The question everybody has asked themselves through history of science is if our solar system is unique and out of the ordinary or it is quite normal out in deeper space what we have in our solar system. Kepler telescope is a space based system that will enable us to tell us more about this, as terrestrial based systems are to prone to noise and signal dampening to be able to detect things Kepler telescope will be able to.
Kepler telescope will be able to continuously observe more than 100.000 stars that are up to three thousand light years away from us in the Cygnus Lyra region of the Milky way system.
The telescope will be in earth orbit for over three years before the researchers can determine whether we have detected a similar object as the photo (Pale blue dot) from the astronomer Carl Saga showed the world of earth from a satellite far away from earth (farthest away ever taken of earth).
If Kepler telescope does not detect anything, it will establish theories about our place in the universe, which will remodel some theories existing today. Researchers’ states they would be surprised if they do not find anything with Kepler.
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Systems with multiple transiting planets are particularly rich with information that provides clues as to their physical characteristics. View full post on Astronomy.com – News
During the next servicing mission, Servicing Mission 4 (SM4), astronauts will make the final trip to the Hubble Telescope. Over the course of five spacewalks, they will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones, and perform the component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning at least into 2014. The effort-intensive, rigorously researched, exhaustively tested mission also involves diverse groups of people on the ground throughout the country. www.nasa.gov Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4 Download pdf Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) is the final Shuttle mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronauts will bring new instruments to Hubble along with gyros, batteries and other components crucial for the telescopes continued success through the year 2013. Mission Manifest With more than 17 years of historic and trailblazing science already accomplished, Hubble will be reborn with SM4. The mission will feature the installation of two new cutting-edge science instruments to enhance Hubbles capabilities by large factors, the refurbishment of Hubbles subsystems and extension of operating life to at least 2013. Astronauts will also attempt the first ever on-orbit repair of two existing instruments the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Advanced Cameras for Surveys. SM4 was originally planned for 2004, but was postponed after the Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy in 2003 and then canceled in light of Agency safety concerns. Following the …
In addition to detailing the never-before-seen regions at the solar system’s edge, IBEX data has been used in discoveries closer to Earth. View full post on Astronomy.com – News
Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space, the ultimate mountaintop. Above the distortion of the atmosphere, far far above rain clouds and light pollution, Hubble has an unobstructed view of the universe. Scientists have used Hubble to observe the most distant stars and galaxies as well as the planets in our solar system.
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