Slideshow: Is anybody out there?
The Kepler spacecraft has been made operational again remotely by NASA and as of April 22, 2016 is back on its K2 mission searching for exoplanets, which are planets beyond our Solar System. On July 23, 2015 Kepler discovered the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a star acting as a sun. This effort helps to find another “Earth” which may inhabit life forms.
Sent out to detect Earth-sized planets, orbiting other stars in a portion of our Milky Way galaxy, Kepler measures small variations in the brightness of light from these stars. Kepler is shown here at 1/20th scale in the NASA JPL/Caltech museum. The Kepler spacecraft, in 2014, discovered Kepler-10c, a large, rocky planet in the Draco constellation 560 light-years from Earth. Scientists believe that rocky planets formed much earlier than originally thought. And one astrophysicist said that if you can make rocks, you can make life. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
NASA Engineers have developed an innovative way to stabilize and control the Kepler spacecraft. They are using the sun as the “third wh.el” which has Kepler searching for planets again, but also making discoveries on young stars to supernovae. (Image courtesy of NASA Ames/W Stenzel.)
Voyager 1 and 2 is shown here at 1/10th scale in the NASA JPL/Caltech museum. Twin Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977. In 2013, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, more than 100 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
Voyager carries a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk which contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. This phonograph record was selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University with 115 images and a variety of natural sounds of our Earth existence. Sagan commented, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” (Image courtesy of NASA.)
NASA’s Hubble Space telescope was launched on April 24, 1990. On February 16, 2016 Hubble was able to analyze the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the class known as super-Earths. 55 Cancri e, as it is called, was seen to have a dry atmosphere with no indications of water vapor. Hydrogen and helium were detected in its atmosphere. Data also suggests that there is the presence of hydrogen cyanide, a marker for a carbon-rich atmosphere. There are indications that a very high ratio of carbon to oxygen may exist in the planet’s atmosphere as well. Although hydrogen cyanide, or prussic acid, is highly poisonous to life as we know it on Earth – who is to say that other life has not adapted to such an atmosphere? This exoplanet exists in the planetary system of 55 Cancri, which is a star 40 light-years from Earth. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
The Cassini Spacecraft, launched in 1997, has seen evidence of mysterious “lakes” filled with a liquid on Saturn’s Moon Titan. Titan is the most intriguing moon orbiting Saturn. It has a smog-like atmosphere and is unique in our solar system. Scientists have said that it resembles a primordial Earth. Cassini delivered the European Space Agency (ESA) Huygens probe to a successful landing on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
Various spacecraft have explored Mars, the planet relatively close to Earth, that may have the best prospects for finding life or past signs of life – maybe even under the surface in lava tubes. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
The Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter arrived at the Red Planet in 2006. The search was on looking for clues about water on Mars with the goal of determining if life ever existed on Mars. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
The 2001 Mars Odyssey is a long-term robotic exploration of Mars. This spacecraft, for the first time, was able to globally map the amount and distribution of the various chemical elements and minerals on the Red Planet. The maps of hydrogen distribution allowed scientists to discover large quantities of water ice at the poles just under the Martian surface. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
The Mars Global Surveyor launched on November 7, 1996. During its mission it took 250,000 images of Mars and transmitted 5 terabits of data. This craft monitored the Martian atmosphere, surface and internal structure and was a support for future Mars missions. (Image from the NASA JPL/Caltech museum.)
Steve Taranovich is the editor-in-chief of EE Times’ Planet Analog website where this article first appeared.
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