Russian support personnel work to help get crew members out of the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft shortly after the capsule landed with the Expedition 28 team on Sept. 16. The astronauts are returning from more than five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 27 and 28 crews. Photo courtesy of NASA/Bill Ingalls
I just stumbled on some pretty great photos from last week’s Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft landing with Expedition 28 Commander Andrey Borisenko and Flight Engineers Ron Garan and Alexander Samokutyaev in a remote area outside the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. But we get more than just a photo of a capsule floating in the air. NASA provides images of the astronauts being removed from the spacecraft and calling loved ones from cell phones. Love it.
The clouds you see on Saturn’s northern hemisphere is actually a storm, one of largest and most intense storms ever observed on the ringed planet. This picture, captured on Feb. 25, 2011, was taken about 12 weeks after the storm began, according to NASA.
The clouds had formed a tail that wrapped around the planet. Some of the clouds moved south and got caught up in a current that flows to the east (to the right) relative to the storm head. This tail, which appears as slightly blue clouds south and west (left) of the storm head, can be seen encountering the storm head in this view.
It’s 35-feet long, 3,000 pounds, and it’s crashing somewhere on Earth tomorrow.
This conceptual image shows the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, launched on Sept. 15, 1991, by the space shuttle Discovery. Measurements from the mission helped define the role of Earth's upper atmosphere in climate and climate variability. The 35-foot-long, 15-foot-diameter UARS was decommissioned on Dec. 14, 2005. Credit: NASA
The NASA satellite UARS is expected to re-enter our atmosphere sometime tomorrow afternoon, Sept. 23, according to NASA officials. UARS, or Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, should break up into pieces during its plunge, however, that won’t happen with all of the parts. If you happen to find a piece of the debris, don’t touch it. Contact your local law enforcement authority.
But here’s some good news for my folks in the United States: The satellite is not expected to reach us.
Here’s some bad news: The satellite is not expected to reach us.
How sad. We’ll be safe (public risk was always minimal), but we’ll miss out on the fireworks.
Objects the size of UARS re-enter Earth about once a year, according to NASA officials. Perhaps the biggest object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere was Skylab, a 75-ton station that was unexpectedly pushed out of orbit due to high solar activity. On July 11, 1979, Skylab plunged into Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated in western Australia and the southeastern Indian Ocean..
More time and location information for the UARS re-entry will be released within 24 to 48 hours, according to NASA officials.
Here’s some background: UARS launched into orbit in 1991. It measured ozone and chemicals compounds found in the ozone layer, winds and temperatures in the stratosphere, and energy input from the Sun. It was decommissioned in 2005 and has been orbiting Earth ever since.
Take a look at this time-lapsed video taken from the International Space Station as it orbits our planet. The movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica.
Over the past 9 months, over 160 exoplanets – or planets outside of our solar system – have been found. Those discoveries include a diamond planet, an invisible one, and another darker than the blackest coal. That surpasses figures from 2010, where 110 exoplanets were confirmed.
This week, the number of known exoplanets increased tremendously. Over 80 were confirmed, according to scientists in several worldwide organizations. This increase in planetary discovery certainly had to do with the second Extreme Solar Systems conference. The six-day event, which took place Sept. 11 to 17, brought together hundreds of exoplanet researchers and enthusiasts.
On the second day of the conference, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) came out with a huge discovery. It had found 50 exoplanets, including one in the “Goldilocks” – or habitable – zone. That means life could be supported on that planet. Also, among the 50 included 16 “Super-Earths,” or planets whose mass is one to 10 times that of Earth.
Big. Very big.
The ESO certainly started the week off with a bang. The discovery was due to the HARPS system, a spectrograph on one of the world’s largest telescopes. Since it began planet hunting in 2003, HARPS has help find 150 planets.
“How is anyone going to top that announcement,” I thought.
The next day, UK astronomers from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) team announced that it had found 23 gas giants, or planets much like our Jupiter.
Ok. Nice showing. But what, or who, is WASP? Does it even matter? 23 isn’t going to beat 50.
So we waited for NASA. What did it have up its sleeve? NASA sent out a press release that indicated there was going to be an exoplanet announcement with the Lucas Film guys. Hmmm? Lucas Films? What is going on? (NASA also announced that it had come up with a plan for deeper, manned space travel, i.e. Mars, asteroids.)
I certainly didn’t think NASA was going to announce that it had found Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home in Star Wars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is the most "Tatooine-like" planet yet found in our galaxy and is depicted here in this artist's concept with its two stars. Tatooine is the name of Luke Skywalker's home world in the science fiction movie Star Wars. In this case, the planet it not thought to be habitable. It is a cold world, with a gaseous surface, but like Tatooine, it circles two stars.
Ok, not the real Tatooine, but a planet called Kepler 16-b that orbits two stars. The discovery was due to the Kepler mission, which has been planet hunting since 2009. It has helped confirm 21 planets and identified over 1,200 planetary candidates.
I think Kepler might have beaten HARPS.
You’re putting Star Wars against something we can’t really envision. Sure, we can see the illustrations, but it’s not the same.
No matter who came out on top this week, the fascinating thing is that the discoveries made a lot of people talk about science. With this week’s additions, there are now 684 confirmed planets outside of our solar system. How cool is that?
We’re living in interesting times, my friends. I can’t wait to see what they find next.
The Soyuz spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area outside of the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Friday, Sept. 16. NASA Astronaut Ron Garan, Russian Cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev are returning from more than five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 27 and 28 crews.
According to NASA, “Russian recovery teams were on hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and adjust to gravity after 164 days in space.”
Recently, we found out just how much “space junk” is orbiting Earth. There are more than 500,000 pieces of debris, all traveling up to 17,500 miles per hour. At that rate, there’s a very good chance a piece of junk could crash into a multimillion dollar satellite or spacecraft and cause quite a bit of damage. About 200,000 pieces of the space junk are the size of a softball or larger. What should be done?
More than four dozen exoplanets, including a “Super-Earth” that could support life, have been discovered, the Eastern Southern Observatory (ESO) announced this morning. It’s the largest discovery of exoplanets reported at one time, the ESO stated in a release.
ESO/M. Kornmesser
This artist’s impression shows the planet orbiting the Sun-like star HD 85512 in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). This planet is one of sixteen super-Earths discovered by the HARPS instrument.
Of the 50 planets discovered, 16 are “Super-Earths,” or planets that have a mass similar to our planet.
“These planets will be amount the best targets for future space telescopes to look for signs of life in the planet’s atmosphere by looking for chemical signatures such as evidence of oxygen,” stated Francesco Pepe (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland), the lead author of one of the recent papers.
One planet in particular, HD 85512 b, is located at the edge of the habitable zone -a narrow zone around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right, the release stated.
The ESO has found only one other Super-Earth that could support life. That planet, Gliese 581 d, was discovered in 2007.
The planets were found using the HARPS spectograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Since scientists started using the HARPS system to detect exoplanets, about 150 new planets have been discovered.
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered 20 exoplanets, however, it has also found more than 1,200 planetary candidates.
It seems like Monday is going to be a big day for astronomy.
“Significant” discoveries regarding exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system, will be announced by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Monday, Sept. 12. The results were obtained with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a release stated. HARPS is the spectrograph on a 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile.
What is this announcement? Has the ESO found proof of water on another planet? According to Space.com, ESO scientists “are actively involved in the search for potentially habitable alien planets — those on which liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, could exist.”
Space Oddities has found that in 2009, the ESO redefined the orbit of a planet called “Gliese 581 d” and placed it within the habitable zone, where oceans could exist. That discovery was also due to information provided by HARPS.
From the 2009 release:
The new observations have revealed that this planet is in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. ‘d’ could even be covered by a large and deep ocean — it is the first serious ‘water world’ candidate.
It has been three years since that news. Is the announcement related?
There are other indications that the announcement will deal with the discovery of water on an exoplanet. Dr. Francesco Pepe of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland was part of the team that found the “earth-like” exoplanet in 2009. He’s also part of the team that will make the major announcement Monday morning.
An X1.8 flare from Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011, captured here with by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Credit: NASA/SDO/LMSAL/GOES
We’re headed for a bit of a storm this weekend. The sun has been pretty active the past couple of days and one region in particular has been releasing Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), violent and sudden releases of gas and magnetic fields.
Take a look at this video.
It shows past solar flare and CME eruptions on the sun’s surface:
That energy storm is expected to reach Earth tomorrow, Sept. 11, and/or Monday, Sept. 12, scientists say.
NASA computer models suggest that the latest CME may give a glancing blow to Earth on the morning of September 11, and might create some aurora.
So “glancing blow” equals auroras. Let’s hope it’s just auroras. NASA says that the most recent flare – the fourth in the past week – was considered “moderate.” Additional information is not available.
Pretty sure NASA is utilizing its ability to predict where these solar storms are headed. Read more about that in an earlier Space Oddities post.
However, if a fairly large CME was headed toward Earth, would NASA let us know the full extent of the situation? A large CME could affect our satellites and power grids. Some believe a massive one could send us back into the Stone Age. Scary.
Browsing some solar flare video, I stumbled upon a Youtube video that suggests a correlation between CMEs and earthquakes on Earth. I ignored it, but then I realized that there had been a 6.7-magnitude earthquake yesterday in Vancover Island, Canada. It is a northern region.
This weekend should be the perfect time to test out that CME theory. We’ll see what happens.