The first exoplanet, or planet that orbits a star other than our own, was discovered in 1995. Between then and now astronomers have discovered the existence of thousands more, and just recently, we found a particularly intriguing one. Earlier this morning, NASA announced the discovery of a planet called Kepler-452b — the most Earth-like world we’ve found yet.
“You and I won’t be traveling to these planets, but our children’s children’s children could.”
Despite the fact that it’s around 1,400 light-years away, Kepler-452b is remarkably similar to the planet we call home. Its radius is roughly 1.5 times that of Earth, and it circles a sun-like star in an orbit that takes roughly 385 days — just 5 percent longer than our own year. More important, it also orbits at an ideal distance. According to NASA, 452b is located in the “habitable zone” around its star, where temperatures are warm enough for liquid water to pool on the surface.
We still don’t know what the surface is like, though. The Kepler observatory can’t quite see it clearly enough to figure out if the planet is rocky or gaseous, but NASA’s top astronomers estimate that Kepler-452b has between a 50 percent chance and a 62 percent chance of being rocky. If it turns out to be solid, scientists say the mass of the planet would be somewhere around five times that of Earth (which would increase the force of gravity, and make getting out of bed in the morning quite a chore). That’s just an educated guess at this point, though, and much more data is needed in order to determine whether Kepler-452b could potentially be habitable for humans, or be home to alien life.
“Signs of life require advanced technology and instruments that would probably have to be in orbit,” explained John Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “What Kepler’s doing is telling us that there are worlds out there, and then we can follow up and look for bio-signatures for signs of life with other tools.”
And that’s exactly what NASA plans to do. The agency already has a number of missions planned that will help us gain more detailed information on Kepler 452b — the first of which are slated to begin in the next couple years.
“This is humankind’s first step,” said Jeff Conklin, a Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. “You and I probably won’t be traveling to these planets, but our children’s children’s children could be. One generation from now we might be able to get there. It gives humanity something to aim for.”
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.