Astronomers Discover New Earth-Like Planet

This week a group of astronomers released information about a new planet that has been discovered. In the ongoing quest to discover and understand the universe new planets are found relatively often, but it isn’t very often that a planet this similar to Earth is discovered. The new planet might be nearly 500 light-years away, but scientists say it is a pretty significant discovery.

The new planet is named Kepler-186f, and while it is absolutely impossible to reach it scientists say it has plenty of information that could help us understand the origins of the universe. There have been quite a few planets discovered that are similar to Earth, but Kepler is unique in that it has been given a 90% chance of having liquid water. Based on the distance from the nearest star, as well as other factors, astronomers say that Kepler is the most likely planet we’ve found that could be inhabited by life.

This is a very significant scientific breakthrough, and it just goes to show how much research and science are constantly advancing. Additional research is being conducted right now, but it is still pretty impressive to see just how much information we can discern from such a distant planet.

Recycling is becoming more and more important in many industries due to cost of materials and a number of other factors. That is precisely why, this week, DARPA announced that they will soon be entering the recycling world in a completely revolutionary way.

DARPA’s plan for recycling involved satellites that are no longer in use or have failed in some way. The idea is simple, take off any and all parts that might be usable or valuable and rebuild them to be reused. Unfortunately the hard part is that they’re going to be doing all of this work while the dead satellites continue to orbit earth. DARPA is hopeful that their robotics designs will be able to accomplish the task and if they do it may save billions of dollars on future space endeavors. Currently a number of components no satellites cost hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases, by recycling these parts NASA and other agencies will be able to save significant amounts of money.

No word yet on when DARPA hopes to actually start the recycling, but at this point they’re eager to get started. There are apparently as many as 200 satellites that are considered prime targets for this program and will likely be approached first.

A father launched his four-year-old son’s favourite toy train (called Stanley) into space. The whole creative part of it is a rather sweet thing to do with and for his little boy.

So, how it happened: Father and son drive off somewhere and set up. Dad starts working his magic.

He attaches something to a white weather balloon and attaches Stanley the toy train to a bright orange box. The balloon also has a camera attached to it as well as an old mobile phone (which was used for GPS purposes).

Dad releases the balloon. What you next see is the balloon’s different facial expressions (with the aid of animation, of course) as it goes up and up into the sky. Stanley travelled as far as 18 miles up before the balloon burst and he made his descent, making a safe landing in a corn field.

With the aid of the GPS, they were able to find Stanley who was reunited with his happy little owner.

The music and toy train’s facial expressions were added afterwards using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.

Beautiful project.

(p.s.: it’s had over 3 million hits on YouTube so far.)

This week SpaceX reached new levels of success for the privatize space industry that will bring great advances to the entire industry. This is absolutely great news because it shows just how powerful and how successful private industries can become if the opportunity is available. More importantly this success also shows that private industry will be able to make space travel cheaper and more available in the near future which should bring plenty of research opportunities.

This entire mission was a massive success which is great news in every way. The success came in parts as SpaceX not only completed the first major privately funded space launch but also the first successful docking with the international space station. The fact that SpaceX was so successful is absolutely great news for the ISS program because it means there is still a method available to continue brining goods and supplies thanks to a small private American company.

For the average person this project might not exactly be amazing news. But in the grand scheme of things it is absolutely great news for the science and space industries as a whole. It will only be a matter of time before private space launches begin to become more and more common which means that some day soon space travel may eventually become a very real possibility for the average person.

Earlier this week NASA announced that they were expecting to have serious issues with the International Space Station, or ISS. NASA made it clear that there was a variety of pieces of large space debris that would likely directly cross the path of ISS and unless something was done they would collide and cause significant damage.

Fortunately today NASA announced that the emergency avoidance maneuvers were a success as ISS has successfully cleared the pieces of debris. Using a fairly simple thrust maneuver astronauts on board ISS managed to essentially side step around the debris just shortly before impact. The separation distance was relatively large according to officials but the fact that it was such a close call overall has concerned many people.

Either way the good news is that the space station did in fact successfully manage to avoid a collision with the debris. Astronauts on board ISS are safe as always and are undoubtedly happy about the successful avoidance of the collision. NASA is expected to release an official update on the matter in the coming week but for now everyone is simply happy to know that nothing happened as the short maneuver was enough to slide past the debris without collision. NASA also says that they plan to actively monitor the new piece of debris in order to reduce future collision possibilities which should help prevent any future collision scares of any kind assuming everything goes as planned.

C

hina has been working hard to develop a strong and successful space program and it seems that the hard work may be paying off finally. This week China successfully completed their most difficult and challenging projects yet; successfully docking a space craft with an orbiting object. Much like the International Space Station, China used their own specific space lab to test the docking ability and the test was a success.

Overnight in China the earth based crew worked diligently to monitor all necessary systems and information; after hours of work and waiting the Shenzhou 8 space craft was successful in its attempts to dock with the space lab. For those working on the Chinese space program and the Chinese public in general this is a major milestone as it means they are in fact ready to begin building their very own orbiting research station similar to ISS.

No word yet on when China is planning to begin launching their own space station but analysts say it could be soon. This milestone in space is one of the largest most countries have even faced and it is truly amazing that China was able to accomplish this given how young the country’s space program is. The future of space travel from China is very bright and this is just another sign that the Chinese space program is going to continue growing rapidly as the research continues to develop successful methods and successful craft.

Search for Alien Life Begins Again

The SETI institute has been searching for extraterrestrial life for a few decades but due to budget and funding issues the institute was unfortunately shut down earlier this year. Fortunately today SETI announced that thanks to funding from individuals the SETI program will once again be searching for extra terrestrial life in space.

SETI is a unique operation in the way it searches for extra terrestrial life; by utilizing extra resources on home and business computers SETI is essentially able to analyze a huge amount of data without needing any super computers or large data centers. Distributed computing actually became a popular endeavor after SETI began to catch on with home users just a few years ago.

In April SETI shut down as funding was cut off which meant no future development or additional data could be captured. Thanks to the two hundred thousand dollars raised through private funding SETI is planning to create a new array of telescopes and monitoring systems that should hopefully make the entire project much more successful. Either way the SETI team is glad to be back on the search for extra terrestrial life in space; no word on when exactly the new equipment will be online and ready to function but the SETI team says they will begin working as quickly and efficiently as possible to reduce waste and hopefully prevent any future budgeting shutdowns. Until then the SETI project will continue to run as a distributed computing project.

Earthbound Asteroid Barely Misses

An asteroid was expected to make a very close pass with Earth today and fortunately for everyone that was the entire extent of the ordeal. Originally there was speculation that the asteroid’s path may have been curving just enough that it would actually make an impact on Earth but fortunately such a disaster was avoided today.

The asteroid was all over the news around the world as a worldwide fear that impact might be coming spread; fortunately the original calculations were in fact correct. The large asteroid passed by Earth in a boomerang like orbit with just 7000 miles between it and Earth.

As always the near miss brought up some serious debates among emergency response teams; and in the end this is perhaps the greatest benefit of the entire scare. Creating some sort of emergency response plan is always the first plan of action so that is exactly what many national teams did in countries all over the world.

Fortunately there is not another predicted near Earth asteroid pass for the next 19 years so it will be quite some time before another possible scare spreads among the news media. As for now researchers will continue tracking the asteroid that just missed Earth while also constantly keeping track of other potential asteroids that could come close to Earth. Fortunately for everyone today’s possible collision was avoided simply due to the sheer coincidence of where the asteroid passed; if an actual impact had occured it is unknown what would have possibly happened after the impact.

Winning Songs Played For Space Shuttle Crew

NASA announced one of their most popular contests ever earlier this year and today the contest officially came to a close as the winner was given his prize. The contest was all about writing a song to honor and remember Space Shuttle Endeavor and the once in a lifetime prize has having the winning song played for the Space Shuttle crew just before the mission ended.

The winner of this incredibly contest was Jorge Otero from Spain along with his band; the song is titled “Sunrise Number 1”. Just as the contest called for the song was made to commemorate the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavor. The shuttle crew will be hearing the winning song just before they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, drawing a close to the final mission.

The second place song was also given a very prestigious award today. “Dreams you Give” by Brian Plunkett from Missouri was played as a wakeup song for the Space Shuttle Endeavor crew this morning. Neither of the contest winners have commented on the prize though it is surely something they will never forget; especially given how rare it is for such a prize to be available.

Space Shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to finish the current mission Tuesday afternoon when it lands back home at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There will be one more space shuttle mission before the program ends; it is currently scheduled to take place in the next two months.

Giffords Attends Space Shuttle Launch

Just one week into the New Year Arizona Representative, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an attempted assassination. Through the past 5 months she has been undergoing substantial surgeries and treatments to help expedite her recovery and today Giffords showed the best sign of recovery yet.

What Giffords did today is gaining all sorts of press conference not because of the miraculous recovery but simply because she was able to attend Space Shuttle Endeavor’s final launch. Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, was commanding Endeavor as it lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the last time and up until recently Giffords’ doctors were not sure if she would be able to attend.

The original schedule for Endeavor’s final launch would have made it much more difficult for Giffords to attend but after nearly 2 weeks of delays she had absolutely no trouble making to Florida to see the launch in person. Overall doctors say it is a very good sign that Giffords has recovered enough to accomplish such a feat.

Of course recovery is not over for Representative Giffords either. Doctors are planning another incredibly important surgery which will replace a large portion of her skull that was removed. At this time doctors have not yet chosen an exact surgery date though overall most medical analysts agree that Giffords’ long term outlook for recovery looks very good. 5 months ago many doctors and medical experts believed she had little chance of survival but she has proven them wrong today by showing how much she has recovered.