NASA's Kepler Telescope Soars

March 06, 2009

It's a small probe with a mission that could be profound: learning if there are other places like Earth in the galaxy. 

Friday night, NASA was just happy to get its Kepler telescope safely into space.

A Delta rocket carrying Kepler blasted off into the clear, starry sky over Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 10:49 p.m. EST, heading toward an orbit with an optimal view of a patch of sky between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

 Once in position, Kepler will have two jobs: Stare at the sky and don't move.

Scientists will be looking for the faintest winks of light from more than 100,000 stars, hoping some of them are caused by passing planets.

More than 340 planets beyond our solar system already have been found, but none are as small as Earth. The Kepler mission is the first attempt to look for Earth-sized worlds in habitable zones -- places where liquid water can exist. Water is believed to be essential for life.

“It very possibly could tell us that Earths are very, very common, that we have lots of neighbors out there. Or, it could tell us that Earths are really, really, really rare -- perhaps we’re the only Earth,” NASA's space sciences chief Ed Weiler said during a prelaunch news conference.

 “I think that would be a very bad answer,” he added. “I for one, don’t want to live in an empty universe where we’re the best there is -- that’s a scary thought to many of us.”

 

Marsgate, Revisited

August 08, 2008

A few days have passed since the buzz about what is or isn’t on Mars and NASA’s handling of the matter so it seemed reasonable to have a think for a bit about what happened.

First and foremost, it’s striking that so many people apparently care whether there is or isn’t life on Mars, though why knowing whether some bit of bacteria absorbed energy, made microbial pee and/or poo and spun off 2.5 microbial kids is a bit hard to explain in this age of opposite-speak and skepticism.

Second, to the extent that my personal and professional integrity extends, I can state that there was no government cover-up about what information to release and when to release it, so if you’re totally into conspiracy theories, you can stop reading here.

Third (and if you’re into conspiracy theories you might enjoy this), the buzz that initially cast NASA as the villain for hiding information, not only allowed the government to step into a role most beloved by Americans -- the vindicated -- but also exit the drama with heightened awareness, even accolades, for its work. For anyone missing this subtlety, NASA spelled it out for us: “Phoenix Mars Team Opens Window on Scientific Process,” was the headline on the agency’s Aug. 5 press release laying the matter to rest. In addition to world-wide media coverage, the clan following the mission on the Twitter text-messaging network grew by more than 300 members.

Finally, will it happen again? Indubitably. That is the price we pay for our Freedom of Speech. It can make for an uncomfortable moment or two, but when it’s lacking, guess who is the first to take note?

“We strongly believe societies which allow the free expression of ideas tend to be the most prosperous and the most peaceful.”

-- President George W. Bush
Aug. 8, 2008
at the dedicated of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China

No Life Here

July 23, 2008

Looking for life in the universe? Here’s one place you can skip: a new view of the Pinwheel Galaxy, aka Messier 101, in infrared light shows a coral-red outer ring devoid of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

If you’re wondering what those are take a look in your barbecue pit, your car’s exhaust pipe or anyplace combustion takes place, advises the witty Whitney Clavin, a CalTech press officer who covers news from the Spitzer Space Telescope team.

She reports on a paper in this week’s Astrophysical Journal explaining why Pinwheel’s outer rim is red not blue like the interior arms. Seems radiation has killed off the carbon-containing molecules at the galaxy’s edge.

"There's a threshold at the rim of this galaxy, where the organic material is getting destroyed," says Karl Gordon of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

Image tech specs: infrared light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns in blue; 8 microns in green; 24 microns in red. Image taken with Spitzer infrared array camera, multiband imaging photometer and infrared spectrograph. Not available in stores.

Little Leo

April 10, 2008

Twinkle, twinkle little star
Are you hiding planets afar?

More and more often, the answer is turning out to be “yes.” The latest discovery: a world just five time larger than Earth circling around its mother star in the constellation Leo. If true, the planet would be the smallest yet found beyond our solar system. More importantly, researchers believe the planet to be of the terrestrial, or rocky body, variety.

A team of astronomers from the Spanish Research Council working with Dr Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, a visiting astrophysicist at University College London, made the discovery using a computer simulation that predicted the planet’s location based on small changes on an already discovered sibling planet.

The scientists say the newly discovered world, called GJ 436c, orbits its host star in 5.2 Earth days and completes a revolution in 4.2 Earth days.

“On Earth, a full day (sunset to sunset) coincides quite closely with the rotation period. On the new planet these two periods do not coincide, since the orbital translation period and the rotation period are very similar. For this reason, a full day on the new planet would take four planetary years, or roughly 22 Earth days,” notes a press release about the discovery.

The study is published in this week’s Astrophysical Journal.

Sheep in space

March 22, 2008

The announcement this week that scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found organic molecules in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system reminded me of an interview I had a while back about how researchers might determine if life exists on other planets.

I asked if extraterrestrial scientists were looking at Earth, for example, would they know it was populated. Apparently, one of the give-aways would be the same chemical found in the atmosphere of planet HD 189733b -- methane. We can thank the sheep and cows for providing telltale signs of life on Earth.

It’s doubtful any alien livestock are busy processing dinner on HD 189733b, however. The planet is too close to its mother star to support life as we know it.