This artist’s conception shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about their diameters, masses and distances from the host star. All the exoplanets in this system exist in the so-called habitable zone and are Earthlike in size and mass. Photo by @nasa/JPL-Caltech
Skip 39 light-years across our galaxy, and you’ll arrive at Trappist-1, an ultracool dwarf star with a band of special followers. This dim star hosts seven Earth-like planets within its habitable zone, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. Exoplanets are a dime a dozen these days, but due to unique properties in this exosolar system, the new discovery may usher in a movement in the hunt for habitable worlds — one where astrophysicists can ascertain the presence of life without traveling across the cosmos.
“It’s the first time so many Earth-type planets [have been found] formed in the habitable zone of a star,” Michaël Gillon, an astrophysicist at Université de Liège in Belgium and study co-author, said during a press briefing Tuesday.
By “habitable,” Gillon means the exoplanets exist in a temperature zone that’s conducive for liquid water even though these Earth sisters orbit relatively close to a dwarf star. If magically transplanted, all seven Earth sisters would land within the distance between Venus and our Sun. The closest sister is 1.02 million miles from Trappist-1 — a third of the distance separating Mercury from our blazing star.
Yet every planet in this hepta-Earth system may support liquid water, due to the star’s ultracool, low-radiation dwarf status. Trappist-1 is also approximately a tenth the size and mass of our sun. Researchers plan to capitalize on this star’s diminutive nature to discover if these planets are habitable.
“We will be able to study the climates and chemical composition of the atmospheres,” Cambridge University astronomer and study co-author Amaury Triaud said Tuesday during a press briefing. “Within a few years, we’ll know a lot more about these planets, and with hope, if there is life there maybe within a decade.”
Whoa! That’s a huge claim. Learn why Triaud can make it, even though they haven’t found signs of life yet, by reading more on our website.
Imagine standing on the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f. This artist’s concept is one interpretation of what it could look like. Photo by @nasa/JPL-Caltech
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, lunar module pilot on Apollo 14, passed away Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla., on the eve of the 45th anniversary of his lunar landing.
Mitchell joined Apollo 14 commander Alan Shephard, Jr., the first American in space, in the lunar module Antares, which touched down Feb. 5, 1971, in the Fra Mauro highlands. Shepard and Mitchell were assigned to traverse the lunar surface to deploy scientific instruments and perform a communications test on the surface, as well as photograph the lunar surface and any deep space phenomena. It was Mitchell’s only spaceflight.
Mitchell and Shephard set mission records for the time of the longest distance traversed on the lunar surface; the largest payload returned from lunar surface; and the longest lunar stay time (33 hours). They were also the first to transmit color TV from the lunar surface. Mitchell helped collect 94 pounds of lunar rock and soil samples that were distributed across 187 scientific teams in the United States and 14 other countries for analysis.
“On behalf of the entire NASA family, I would like to express my condolences to the family and friends of NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. “As a member of the Apollo 14 crew, Edgar is one of only 12 men to walk on the moon and he helped to change how we view our place in the universe. ”
Mitchell was drawn to the spaceflight by President Kennedy’s call to send astronauts to the moon. “After Kennedy announced the moon program, that’s what I wanted, because it was the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, and what could you learn, and I’ve been devoted to that, to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that’s what kept me going,” Mitchell said in 1997 interview for NASA’s oral history program.
“To me, that (spaceflight) was the culmination of my being, and what can I learn from this? What is it we are learning? That’s important, because I think what we’re trying to do is discover ourselves and our place in the cosmos, and we don’t know. We’re still looking for that.”
In his book “The Way of the Explorer”, Mitchell wrote, “There was a sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental but that there was an intelligent process at work.”
Mitchell retired from NASA and the U.S. Navy and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973, organized to sponsor research in the nature of consciousness. In 1984, he co-founded the Association of Space Explorers, and international organization for all who “share experience of space travel.” The mission of this organization is to provide a new understanding of the human condition resulting from the epoch of space exploration.
Edgar D. Mitchell was born Sept. 17, 1930 in Hereford, Texas, and considered Artesia, N.M., his hometown. He graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon in 1952, a B.S. in Aeronautics from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1961 and a Doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964. NASA selected Mitchell as an astronaut in 1966. He served on the support crew for Apollo 9 and as backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 10. He worked in the lunar module simulator at the Johnson Space Center during Apollo 13, developing procedures that would bring the crew of that crippled spacecraft home.
“I would like to humanize the space age
by giving a perspective from a non-astronaut, because I think the
students will look at that and say, ‘This is an ordinary person. This
ordinary person is contributing to history.’”
We’ve taken 10 of our top Instagram posts and put them here for your viewing pleasure. Now, your next 10 cell phone backgrounds can be found in one place.
10. Water on Mars
With 210,000 likes, this image is a favorite on Instagram. New findings from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars. Dark, narrow streaks on Martian slopes such as these at Hale Crater are inferred to be formed by seasonal flow of water on contemporary Mars. The streaks are roughly the length of a football field.
9. Smoke Ring for a Halo
With 210,000 likes, this image shined on Instagram. Two stars shine through the center of a ring of cascading dust in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The star system is named DI Cha, and while only two stars are apparent, it is actually a quadruple system containing two sets of binary stars. As this is a relatively young star system it is surrounded by dust.
8. Pluto’s Largest Moon, Charon
With 216,000 likes, a lot of people thought this image was interesting on Instagram. Our New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon - and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history. This high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon was captured just before closest approach on July 14. The image combines blue, red and infrared images; the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon.
7. Veil Nebula
With 220,000 likes, many people favorited this imageon Instagram. This is the expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. This view is a mosaic of six pictures from our Hubble Space Telescope of a small area roughly two light-years across, covering only a tiny fraction of the nebula’s vast structure. This close-up look unveils wisps of gas, which are all that remain of what was once a star 20 times more massive than our sun.
6. Messier 94 Galaxy
With 234,000 likes, this image is a favorite on Instagram. This image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs, about 16 million light-years away. Within the bright ring or starburst ring around Messier 94, new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it.
5. Solar ‘Pumpkin’
With 247,000 likes, many followers enjoyed this imageon Instagram. This photo was posted on Halloween and shows active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face. The image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in October 2014, which watches the sun at all times from its orbit in space.
4. Italy from the International Space Station
With 251,000 likes, this image captivated many of you on Instagram. Before drifting off to sleep, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) captured this images from the International Space Station and wrote, “ Day 180. Moonlight over Italy. #BuonaNotte Good night from @ISS! #YearInSpace.”
3. Cosmic Archaeological Dig
With 286,000 likes, this image dazzled many of you on Instagram. Peering deep into the Milky Way’s crowded central hub of stars, researchers using our Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered for the first time a population of ancient white dwarfs – smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars that inhabited the core. Finding these relics at last can yield clues to how our galaxy was built, long before Earth and our sun formed. This image is a small section of Hubble’s view of the dense collection of stars crammed together in the galactic bulge.
2. Super Blood Moon
With 310,000 likes, this image was very popular on Instagram. It shows the Super Blood Moon behind the Washington Monument on Sunday, Sept. 27, in Washington, DC. The combination of a supermoon and total lunar eclipse last occurred in 1982 and will not happen again until 2033.
1. Pluto
With 363,000 likes, this image is one of our most popular pictures on Instagram. The dwarf planet sent a love note back to Earth via our New Horizons spacecraft, which traveled more than 9 years and 3+ billion miles. This was the last and most detailed image of Pluto sent to Earth before the moment of closest approach, which was at 7:49 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 14 - about 7,750 miles above the surface – roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India - making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.
50 Years Ago Today: Two Gemini spacecraft met in orbit, completing the world’s first space rendezvous. Gemini VI-A, commanded by Walter “Wally” Schirra and piloted by Tom Stafford, rendezvoused with Gemini VII already in orbit with astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell aboard. How did they get to this moment and what practical joke did Stafford and Shirra play the next day? The story on our blog: http://s.si.edu/firstspacerendezvous
When Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched into space in 1977, their mission was to explore the outer solar system, and over the following decade, they did so admirably.
With an 8-track tape memory system and onboard computers that are thousands of times weaker than the phone in your pocket, the two spacecraft sent back an immense amount of imagery and information about the four gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
But NASA knew that after the planetary tour was complete, the Voyagers would remain on a trajectory toward interstellar space, having gained enough velocity from Jupiter’s gravity to eventually escape the grasp of the sun. Since they will orbit the Milky Way for the foreseeable future, the Voyagers should carry a message from their maker, NASA scientists decided.
The Voyager team tapped famous astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan to compose that message. Sagan’s committee chose a copper phonograph LP as their medium, and over the course of six weeks they produced the “Golden Record”: a collection of sounds and images that will probably outlast all human artifacts on Earth.
NASA will detail a major science finding from the agency’s ongoing exploration of Mars during a news briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 28 at the James Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
News conference participants will be:
· Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters
· Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters
· Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta
· Mary Beth Wilhelm of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and the Georgia Institute of Technology
· Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) at the University of Arizona in Tucson
A brief question-and-answer session will take place during the event with reporters on site and by phone. Members of the public also can ask questions during the briefing using #AskNASA.
"Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have. This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two. I don’t mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side."
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“ [Breaking News] NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars
September 28, 2015.
Credit: NASA’s Website
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