Planets orbiting Kepler 444 suggest there’s ancient life in the Milky Way

NASA’s exoplanet hunting Kepler space telescope has encountered a few problems as of late, but there’s still a mountain of data for astronomers to dig through from the last four years. Astronomers analyzing Kepler data recently uncovered something unusual — a solar system about 117 light years away in the direction of Lyra called Kepler-444 with at least five Earth-sized planets. That would be unusual enough, but this planetary system is also extraordinarily ancient at roughly 11.2 billion years.

Astronomers are intrigued by this discovery for several reasons. First, that’s a lot of small rocky planets. Kepler detects alien worlds by the transit method. It watches distant suns for slight dips in brightness that indicate a planet has passed between it and the telescope. These events can be used to calculate the characteristics of the planet, but it works best for larger worlds (super Earths and gas giants). Spotting five planets between the size of Mercury and Venus (basically a little smaller than Earth) is unusual.



Artistic Depiction of Kepler 444 with its Star

The age of Kepler-444 is also something to note. At 11.2 billion years old, the planets orbiting this star were already older than Earth is now when our sun ignited 4.5 billion years ago. The universe itself is only 13.8 billion or so years old, making Kepler-444 one of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. It would have been from the first generation of stars that dotted the sky. Kepler-444 is still very sun-like because it’s 25% smaller and cooler. That means it burns through its nuclear fuel more slowly.

Finding small rocky planets that are billions of years older than Earth suggests that advanced life may have existed in the universe for a very long time. Life on Earth might be very new by comparison. Just think, planets similar to Earth were forming more than 7 billion years before Earth formed, and some of them could have supported life. If other first-generation stars like Kepler-444 have planets, uncountable civilizations could have come into being eons before the first single-cell life appeared on Earth.

The planets orbiting Kepler-444 themselves are not able to support life as we know it. All five planets are packed very close to the parent star with orbits closer than that of Mercury in our solar system. With solar years less than 10 Earth days, they definitely stood out in the Kepler data. The surfaces of these worlds have been baked by the intense heat, reducing any organic material to cinders.

Kepler-444 isn’t a bastion of alien life, but it improves our understanding of planetary formation and points us in a new direction. Astronomers are anxious to find other ancient stars with rocky planets in hopes they might prove more hospitable to life. What if there was still something alive on one of these ancient worlds? That might sound like science fiction right now, but maybe it won’t always be — there’s still a lot of data from Kepler, and future telescopes will improve our ability to spy distant exoplanets.

Source: Geek.com

Russia to create joint orbital station with India, China

Russia is exploring the possibility of a joint manned orbital station with India and China as part of a common strategy to create technological alliances and may take up the matter with the two Asian space giants in July.

"Moscow could propose to China and India to create a joint manned orbital station at the summit of the BRICS emerging economies in Russia's Ufa in July," a document drafted by the expert council at Russia's military and industrial commission said.

The experts recommend "working out the possibilities of an international manned project with BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries as part of a common strategy of creating technological alliances", Itar Tass reported.

The proposal comes after months of speculation that the crisis in Ukraine would doom U.S.-Russia space cooperation. For two decades this effort has largely been focused on the International Space Station project (ISS), which is due to end in 2020. NASA has proposed extending it to 2024, but Russia has suggested it might duck out and instead build its own space station — possibly with the participation of China.

The BRICS project would be roughly analogous to the ISS, a $150 billion project involving 15 nations. Anchored by the United States and Russia, the world's leading spacefaring powers, the ISS allows countries with less advanced spaceflight capabilities to either join onto the station's Russian and American segments or contribute smaller segments.

A BRICS space station would likely emerge from a similar two-nation partnership, again with Russia in a driver's seat. The Military-Industrial Commission recommended approaching either China or India — both countries that have well-developed and increasingly ambitious space programs. The proposal would then allow other BRICS members to join.

India has yet to put a man in space without hitching rides on other nations' rockets. Last year, it demonstrated its rising capabilities after launching an unmanned satellite to Mars on a shoestring budget.

China is perhaps the best partner for such a project. China already launches its own astronauts into space, and is designing its own medium-sized space station. The placement of Russia's new Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East also makes close cooperation with China far easier.

Source : Times Of India , TheMoscowTimes

SpaceX, Boeing on Track to Take Astronauts to Space Station by 2017

The agency will use the partnership to end dependency on Russia

SpaceX has completed the first certification milestone in its CCP commitment, and will spend much of 2015 testing abort solutions for its formerly cargo-only Dragon capsule. (Abort procedures are more critical in crewed missions.) A launchpad abort will be tested in the next two months at Cape Canaveral, and an in-flight abort test will follow "later this year," according to SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell. Uncrewed missions to the ISS with the new capsule will start in 2016, and the company is still working out the makeup of its first test flight crew.

"I DON'T EVER WANT TO HAVE TO WRITE ANOTHER CHECK TO ROSCOSMOS."

The company is also working on outfitting its Dragon capsule with propulsive landing, Shotwell said, which could improve reusability by dispensing with the need to splash down in water. Instead, the capsule would land right at Johnson Space Center, using rockets on the bottom to help control the descent. That's not the only new technology the company is working on. It hopes to outfit its Falcon 9 rockets with wings and retrorockets so they can land on autonomous barges in the ocean.

Boeing has completed the first two certification milestones for its CST-100 spacecraft. NASA has signed off on parts of its commercial crew operation, including designs for the control center, training systems, flight simulators, and software. Boeing has also started building its crew access tower on the Atlas V launchpad, and that construction will continue in between uncrewed Atlas V launches.

The CST-100 will undergo a critical design review in March, and if approved, will let the company launch "full-bore" into manufacturing, according to VP and General Manager of Boeing Space Exploration John Elbon. Boeing's spacecraft can fit up to seven crew members, and is also being designed with reusability in mind. According to Elbon, the plan is for the capsule to be recovered, refurbished, and reused up to 10 times.

When asked how this all fits in with the 2016 budget, Bolden said he's "very optimistic." "Congress has, I think, kind of started to understand the critical importance of commercial crew and cargo. They've seen, as a result of the performance of our providers, that this is not a hoax. It's not a myth. It's not a dream," he said. "It's something that really is happening."

Source : theverge

Scientists Discover Exoplanet With Rings Far More Impressive Than Our Saturn

Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b is shown. Credit: Ron Miller

Children and adults alike marvel at the rings around Saturn. In a model of our solar system, Saturn—and its rings—is typically the one that gets the most attention.

But while it is easy to be fascinated by Saturn, astronomers have recently found an exoplanet with an even grander expanse of wings that is sure to wow a new generation of stargazers.

“The star is much too far away to observe the rings directly, but we could make a detailed mode based on the rapid brightness variations in the star light passing through the ring system. If we could replace Saturn’s rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon,” explains lead researcher Matthew Kenworthy. “The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings.”

Study co-author Eric Mamaek, who first found the rings of the planet, comments, “The planetary science community has theorized for decades that planets like Jupiter and Saturn would have had, at an early stage, disks around them that then led to the formation of satellites. However, until we discovered this object in 2012, no-one had seen such a ring system. This is the first snapshot of satellite formation on million-kilometer scales around a substellar object.”

The University of Rochester professor of physics and astronomy goes on to say, “This planet is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn, and its ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn’s rings are today. You could think of it as a kind of super Saturn.”

Source : piercepioneer.com

Wormhole to another galaxy may exist in Milky Way

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A giant doorway to another galaxy may exist at the centre of the Milky Way, a study suggests.

Scientists believe that dark matter at the centre of our galaxy could sustain a wormhole that we could travel through.

Wormholes are areas where space and time are being bent so that distant points are now closer together.

Einstein predicted them in his theory of General Relativity but nobody knows how they could be held open so that someone could travel through. Most scientists believe that It is extremely unlikely they could exist naturally in the universe. It would take a huge mass, like a Neutron star, to create a bend in time which could bend space time enough to meet another tunnel on the other side. No natural examples have ever been detected.

"If we combine the map of the dark matter in the Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe and we hypothesise the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the size of the galaxy itself," said Professor Paulo Salucci.

"But there's more. We could even travel through this tunnel, since, based on our calculations, it could be navigable. Just like the one we've all seen in the recent film 'Interstellar"'.

He said the research was surprisingly close to what was depicted in director Christopher Nolan's movie, for which theoretical physicist Kip Thorne provided technical assistance.

"What we tried to do in our study was to solve the very equation that the astrophysicist 'Murph' was working on," said Prof Salucci. "Clearly we did it long before the film came out."

 Wormholes bend space-time to allow distant regions to meet

Any wormholes existing in nature have previously been assumed to be microscopic pinpricks in the fabric of space-time.

But the one possibly lying at the centre of the Milky Way would be large enough to swallow up a spaceship and its crew.

Prof Salucci added: "Obviously we're not claiming that our galaxy is definitely a wormhole, but simply that, according to theoretical models, this hypothesis is a possibility."

Other "spiral" galaxies similar to the Milky Way - like its neighbour Andromeda - may also contain wormholes, the scientists believe.

Theoretically it might be possible to test the idea by comparing the Milky Way with a different type of nearby galaxy, such as one of the irregular Magellanic Clouds.

In their paper, the scientists write: "Our result is very important because it confirms the possible existence of wormholes in most of the spiral galaxies ..

"Dark matter may supply the fuel for constructing and sustaining a wormhole. Hence, wormholes could be found in nature and our study may encourage scientists to seek observational evidence for wormholes in the galactic halo region."

The theory was published in the journal Annals of Physics.

Source : Telegraph

Rosetta images reveal crack hundreds of meters long in comet 67P

Image of Comet 67P taken by ESA's Rosetta (Click Image to Download)

The European Space Agency (ESA) succeeded in delivering the Philae lander to the surface of comet 67P several months ago, but its Rosetta probe hasn’t been twiddling its robotic thumbs since then. It’s still in orbit of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to study the comet as it gets closer to the sun. In the newest set of images published by the ESA, scientists reveal 67P is coming apart at the seams. A huge crack was discovered running hundreds of meters along the surface.



To visualize what’s happening, it’s important to know a little about the shape of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Many of us have an idea of comets as being more or less round, but many of them are actually quite oddly shaped. For example, 67P has two lobes, one smaller than the other, connected by a narrow neck. It looks a little like a rubber duck. The crack detected by Rosetta’s Osiris camera is in the neck region, which is also where most of the gas and dust is being expelled.

The crack is about one meter in width, which wouldn’t be so impressive if it wasn’t covering such a large area. The neck region where the crack was found is only 1km wide after all, so a few hundred meters is nothing to sneeze at. In the image above, the crack is visible in two locations on the surface, but the middle section is obscured by layers of dust, which the ESA team has found is plentiful on the surface of 67P, especially in the neck region where the object’s minimal gravity is even less substantial.



67P won’t reach its closest approach to the sun for several months, but it’s already losing more than 11kg of gas and dust every second. Scientists are unsure if the crack will worsen or close up as the comet continues to lose weight. If the stresses on the neck increase, the comet could fracture and break in two .
Some researchers believe that 67P’s shape is the result of two smaller objects colliding in the distant past, so this crack could be following an existing “fault line” in the structure. It’s also possible this crack is nothing out of the ordinary for porous comets like 67P as they erode. It’s hard to say for sure — this is the first time we’ve gotten such a close-up look at a comet.

Rosetta dropped the Philae lander off on 67P back in November, but it didn’t quite go as planned. The lander’s harpoons failed to fire, which caused it to bounce along the surface, eventually coming to rest in a shadow that prevented the solar panels from creating enough power. After doing most of its science, Philae went to sleep. The ESA has continued to monitor conditions on the comet with Rosetta and hopes that when the comet nears the sun, it will shine more light on Philae, allowing it to come back online.

Philae isn’t close enough to the neck region to offer any insights about the newly discovered crack, but it can certainly tell us more about the composition of 67P. Even if Philae never comes back online, Rosetta will keep an eye on the surface from a few kilometers up. It will be there through 67P’s solar perigee in August, and will follow as it heads back out toward Jupiter.

Source : Geek.com

NASA unveils 100-millionth picture of the sun

An instrument onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured NASA's 100-millionth image of the sun. Four telescopes work parallel to capture eight images of the sun and cycle through 10 different wavelengths every 12 seconds.

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration instrument aboard a sun-viewing spacecraft has captured its 100-millionth image of the sun.

The instrument, on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly and uses four telescopes. The photo was taken Jan.19, according to NASA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VVxdN79QZY

In the nearly five years since its start in 2010, Solar Dynamics Observatory has captured images of the sun "to help scientists better understand how the roiling corona gets to temperatures some 1,000 times hotter than the sun's surface, what causes giant eruptions such as solar flares, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move," NASA says.

Source : USA TODAY

NASA unveils stunning 100-millionth picture of the sun

Ceres: NASA Finds Mysterious White Spot On Dwarf Planet

Ceres- A Dwarf Planet located at Asteroid belt (Click Image to Download)

NASA scientists have been stymied by the discovery of a large, bright white spot on the dwarf planet Ceres, which has been revealed in images from the Dawn spacecraft, set to soon arrive at the unusual celestial object.



The white spot appeared in a series of photographs of Ceres taken on January 13, according to Space.com. Though the images were released on January 19, just what has caused the anomaly on the dwarf planet, which is located between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt, remains undetermined, according to mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman.

“Yes, we can confirm that it is something on Ceres that reflects more sunlight, but what that is remains a mystery,” he said.

The Dawn spacecraft marks the first mission to Ceres, and is set to arrive at the dwarf planet in March of this year. The spacecraft has traveled 3.1 billion miles over the last seven years, according to Popular Science, pushed toward the asteroid belt at just 450 mph by a set of ion thrusters.

Scientists know precious little about Ceres, which has a diameter of 590 miles and a surface area four times larger than the state of Texas. Astronomers have previously observed water vapor plumes erupting off Ceres, thought to be the product of ice geysers referred to as “cryovolcanos.” Though much of its mass is believed to be composed of water, some speculate that the Dawn mission will determine that the dwarf planet possesses a rocky, barren surface.

Although it is unclear what Dawn will find when it reaches the dwarf planet, the spacecraft already has a mystery to solve in the form of Ceres’ unusual white spot.

Source: www.inquisitr.com

Windows Holographic will let NASA explore what Curiosity sees on Mars

Microsoft announced the futuristic at-home augmented reality project Windows Holographic today, and one of the many different uses the company teased was a collaboration with NASA and the Curiosity rover team. Now, NASA has released more information on the software it built for Holographic, a program called OnSight.

By using Microsoft's HoloLens visor, NASA scientists will be able virtually explore the areas of Mars that Curiosity is studying in a fully immersive way. It will also allow them to plan new routes for the rover, examine Curiosity's worksite from a first-person view, and conduct science experiments using the rover's data.

The science teams at NASA that have worked with Curiosity's data before have had no problem learning plenty just by a computer screen, but Holographic and HoloLens will literally offer a new perspective on how to interpret the findings. Scientists will be able to virtually surround themselves with images from the rover and then explore the surface from different angles.

HERE is the video of Microsoft Hololens which makes Holographic Display near to reality :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA

That's a big deal, according to OnSight's project manager, who's quoted in the release. "This tool gives them the ability to explore the rover's surroundings much as an Earth geologist would do field work here on our planet," he says.

We may still be decades away from landing humans on Mars, but it looks like Holographic and OnSight will help bridge the gap until then. The JPL team will start testing OnSight with Curiosity later this year. Deeper integration into future missions may have to wait until the next proposed Mars rover lands on the red planet in 2020.

Source : theverge

Europe Wants To Send Humans To The Dark Side Of The Moon

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Should we return to the Moon? While Elon Musk, Mars One, and even NASA have their sights set on the Red planet, many think that the Moon is a better option for space exploration .
The European Space Agency (ESA) is one - they just released a new video stating that the Moon is an important and crucial step in mankind's future.

"In the future, the Moon can become a place where the nations of the world can come together to understand our common origins, to build a common future, and to share a common journey beyond. A place where we can learn to move onwards into the solar system," ESA explains in the video "Destination: Moon" .

ESA envisions future manned missions to the far side of the Moon - also known as the dark side of the Moon because it never faces the Earth (though it isn't shrouded in darkness at all). This alien landscape is a rugged terrain, scarred with billions of years worth of impact craters, including one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, the South Pole-Aitken basin.



Photograph of the far side of the moon taken by a crew member on Apollo 16.

Scientists think the crater formed around 4 billion years ago. Inside of this 8.1-mile-deep crater, certain parts are shrouded in perpetual, freezing darkness, but at the crater's rim, shown below, are high, mountainous peaks that bathe in almost-constant sunlight. It's here, on these lunar mountains that ESA plans to send robots and eventually humans.

By sending future missions to the Moon we will be able to answer questions like:

• Is there water elsewhere on the Moon?


• If so, how much?


• Where did it come from?


• And what can it teach us about the origins of water and life on Earth?

If the Moon proves to have an abundant store of water under it surface, then future human generations can use the hydrogen and oxygen atoms for rocket fuel.

To Check out the full video Goto to Business Insider

U.S. and Russian Astronauts to Spend One Year on the ISS

In another U.S. and Russian joint mission, American Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend 12 months on the International Space Station starting this March, confirms NASA.

During their one year stay in the ISS, Kelly and Kornienko will perform seven research experiments to aid scientists gather significant knowledge on the biomedical, psychological and medical challenges faced by astronauts in long-term space flight.

Among other things, scientists will study differences in vision, functionality, mental health, metabolic processes and physical performance separately from behavioral changes and motor performance.

Another set of tests will be conducted on Kelly and Astronaut Mark Kelly, Scott Kelly's twin brother and also an astronaut who will stay on Earth.

"These investigations will provide broader insight into the subtle effects and changes that may occur in spaceflight as compared to Earth by studying two individuals who have the same genetics, but are in different environments for one year," NASA said in a statement.

Mark Kelly's experience includes piloting Space Transportation System 108 (Endeavour), STS-124 (Discovery Commander) and STS-134 (Endeavour Commander).

Scott Kelly was a crewman of STS-103 in 1999; STS-118 in 2007 and a 159-day stay on the ISS starting on October 7, 2010.
It's going to be a strangely extensive space mission since a typical NASA mission to the ISS lasts no more than six months.

Source : full-timewhistle.com

Giant Asteroid Is Headed Our Way, But NASA Says No Worries

Asteroid Crater Located in Arizona, USA (Click Image to Download)

A ginormous asteroid is headed our way, but no need to worry. NASA says asteroid 2004 BL86--estimated to be about one-third of a mile in diameter--will zoom harmlessly by Earth later this month.

That's good news, of course. And get this: The asteroid's size and proximity--about 745,000 miles from Earth at the nearest point in its flyby, or about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon--mean it should be visible with nothing more than a good pair of binoculars.



"Monday, January 26 will be the closest asteroid 2004 BL86 will get to Earth for at least the next 200 years," Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Lab, said in a written statement. "And while it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it's a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more."

Skywatchers in the Americas, Europe, and Africa should have the best view of the asteroid on the night of Jan. 26, according to EarthSky. Weather permitting, the asteroid should be visible moving slowly across the sky in the vicinity of the constellation Cancer.

Of course, it will only look slow. The asteroid is actually streaking at about 35,000 miles an hour.

Yeomans said he might grab his own binoculars and have a look himself. If you'd rather stay indoors, you can catch the action online at The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0. The show starts at 2:30 p.m. EST.

Source : huffingtonpost

[Video] A Must Watch Video of Black Hole which can Blow your Mind !!!!!

(Click Image to Download)

A Black Hole is a location in space that possesses so much gravity, nothing can escape its pull, even light. We Can't even see them but they are the Most Powerful and Dangerous things in the Universe. They Governs the whole Structure of Galaxies and Universe.

See this Incredible Video of Black Hole Comparison :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgNDao7m41M

Source : morn1415 (Youtube Video Uploader)

Researchers: Solar system may have Planet X , Planet Y

The presence of two additional planets might explain the unexpected orbital features of some trans-Neptunian objects.

Scientists have postulated the existence of possibly two undiscovered planets beyond the orbit of Neptune to explain discrepancies in the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO). The objects have orbits that take them beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Theory predicts that they be randomly distributed and that their orbits must have a semi-major axis with a value around 150 AU; an orbital inclination of nearly zero degrees; and an angle of perihelion, the point in the object’s orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, of zero to 180 degrees.

However, a dozen ETNO do not fit these orbital criteria. These objects have semi-major axis values of 150 to 525 AU, orbital inclinations of around 20 degrees, and angles of perihelion far from 180 degrees.

According to a statement, a new study by astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and University of Cambridge have calculated that these orbital discrepancies could be explained by the existence of at least two additional planets beyond the orbits of Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto. Their study suggests that the gravitational pulls of those two planets must be disturbing the orbits of some smaller ETNO.

However, there are two difficulties with the hypothesis. One is that current models of the formation of our solar system do not allow for additional planets beyond Neptune. Secondly, the team’s sample size is very small, only 13 objects. However, additional results are in the pipeline, which will expand the sample.

“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of UCM and lead author on the study.

The new findings have been published in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Source : thespacereporter

Nasa's Kepler Discovers Star With 3 Planets Larger Than Earth

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Nasa's Kepler space telescope has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth.

The star, EPIC 201367065, is a cool red M-dwarf about half the size and mass of our own Sun.

At a distance of 150 light years, the star ranks among the top 10 nearest stars known to have transiting planets.

"A thin atmosphere made of nitrogen and oxygen has allowed life to thrive on Earth. But nature is full of surprises. Many exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission are enveloped by thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres that are probably incompatible with life as we know it," said Ian Crossfield, the University of Arizona astronomer who led the study.

"Most planets we have found to date are scorched. This system is the closest star with lukewarm transiting planets," added University of California Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura.

Petigura discovered the planets January 6 while conducting a computer analysis of the Kepler data NASA has made available to astronomers.

"There is a very real possibility that the outermost planet is rocky like Earth, which means this planet could have the right temperature to support liquid water oceans," he noted.

After Petigura found the planets in the Kepler light curves, the team quickly employed telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and California to characterise the star's mass, radius, temperature and age.

The star's proximity means it is bright enough for astronomers to study the planets' atmospheres to determine whether they are like the Earth's atmosphere and possibly conducive to life.

The next step will be observations with other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, to take the spectroscopic fingerprint of the molecules in the planetary atmospheres.

"If these warm, nearly Earth-size planets have puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres, Hubble will see the telltale signal," Petigura said.

The paper has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal and is freely available on the arXiv website.

Source : NDTV

ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission Team Wins Space Pioneer Award

The men and women behind India's Mars Mission at ISRO, Bangalore. (Reuters Photo)

ISRO's Mars Mission team has won the prestigious 2015 Space Pioneer Award in the science and engineering category in recognition of achieving the rare feat in its very first attempt.

The prestigious award given by the National Space Society would be presented to the ISRO's Mars Orbiter Programme Team during the National Space Society's 2015 International Space Development Conference to be held in Toronto from May 20-24.

The mission was launched on November 5, 2013 and went into Mars orbit on September 24, 2014.

In a statement, the Society said, this mission has achieved two significant mission firsts. One an Indian spacecraft has gone into orbit around Mars on the very first try (on Sept 24, 2014), which no other country has ever done.

Secondly, the spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit with a high apoapsis (point at which an orbiting object is farthest away from the body it is orbiting), and has a high resolution camera which is taking full-disk color imagery of Mars.

"Very few full disk images have ever been taken in the past, mostly on approach to the planet, as most imaging is done looking straight down in mapping mode. These images will aid planetary scientists," the statement said.

The Mars Orbiter programme team located in Bangalore is headed by Dr Mylswamy Annadurai.

The Space Pioneer Award consists of a silvery pewter Moon globe cast by the Baker Art Foundry in Placerville, California, from a sculpture originally created by Don Davis, the well-known space and astronomical artist.

Source : NDTV

NASA Begins Countdown to Pluto Flyby

An artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, currently en route to Pluto; after nine years and a journey of 3 billion miles, NASA's New Horizons robotic probe will be woken from hibernation to begin its unprecedented mission: the study of the icy dwarf planet Pluto and its home, the Kuiper Belt.

Today marks the beginning of the world’s encounter with Pluto, as a NASA spacecraft that has journeyed for nine years begins its first phrase of approach to the dwarf planet.

The spacecraft is still 135 million miles away from Pluto, but Thursday marks a significant day for NASA scientists as the beginning of a series of phases in which the spacecraft can start studying and capturing increasingly detailed images of the Pluto system.

In just under six months, the world will catches its first close-up glimpse of Pluto when NASA’s New Horizons zooms within 6,200 miles of the dwarf planet on July 14.

New Horizons has traveled three billion miles since its launch on January 19, 2006, according to NASA. That’s farther than any other other space exploration mission has ever gone to reach its primary target.

As with space missions before it, the New Horizons spacecraft is packed with interesting memorabilia, including two U.S. flags and some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930.

The spacecraft has spent about two-thirds of the time since its launch (intermittently) “in hibernation” in order to reduce the wear and tear on equipment and minimize the risk of system failures. But on December 6 last year, the spacecraft came out of hibernation and switched into active mode for its final approach.

Huygens probe landed on Saturn's moon Titan on 14 January 10 years ago

Image of Titan taken by NASA's Cassini Space Orbiter (Click Image to Download)

In honor of the Huygens probe's historic 2005 landing on the surface of Titan (Saturn's largest satellite, and the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere), NASA has released a movie that recreates, with data collected by Huygens and the Cassini orbiter, a dramatic approach of the moon's surface from deep space.



CREDIT : NASA

The descent on 15 January 2005 lasted a total of two hours, with Huygens landing on a frigid floodplain surrounded by icy cobblestones.

It is the only landing that has ever been performed in the outer solar system to date, and one of only a handful of bodies - the others being Venus, Mars, the moon, two asteroids and most recently a comet - that manmade probes have ever landed on.

On the surface the probe continued to send back data for more than an hour, until its batteries were drained.

Since that historic moment, scientists have pored over volumes of data about Titan sent back to Earth.

Here is the Video ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMxL3ZhO8A8

Source : Dailymail , io9

Forget dark matter, STRANGE matter could be lurking somewhere in the universe

(Click image to Download)

• Scientists at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil say an undiscovered type of matter could be found in neutron stars


• Here matter is so dense that it could be 'squashed' into strange matter


• This would create an entire 'strange star' - unlike anything we have seen


• However, the exact properties of strange matter are unknown


• If it exists, though, it could help scientists discover ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves

Neutron stars are among the densest objects in the universe - just a spoonful of matter from one of them would weigh more than the moon.

But inside these remarkable stellar objects, which are no bigger than a city on Earth, a remarkable process might be taking place.

Scientists have revealed their matter might become so squashed that it turns into ‘strange matter’ - and observing so-called strange stars could unlock some of the secrets of the universe.

Scientists at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil say an undiscovered type of matter could be found in neutron stars (illustration shown). Here matter is so dense that it could be 'squashed' into strange matter. This would create an entire 'strange star' - unlike anything we have seen

The latest theory was proposed by Dr Pedro Moraes and Dr Oswaldo Miranda, both of the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil.

They say that some types of neutron stars might be made of a new type of matter called strange matter.

What the properties of this matter would be, though, are unknown - but it would likely be a ‘liquid’ of several types of sub-atomic particles.

Source: daily mail

Hubble captures the sharpest ever view of neighbouring spiral Galaxy

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest and biggest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as Messier 31. The enormous image is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years.

This sweeping view shows one third of our galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, with stunning clarity. The panoramic image has a staggering 1.5 billion pixels — meaning you would need more than 600 HD television screens to display the whole image . It traces the galaxy from its central galactic bulge on the left, where stars are densely packed together, across lanes of stars and dust to the sparser outskirts of its outer disc on the right.

The large groups of blue stars in the galaxy indicate the locations of star clusters and star-forming regions in the spiral arms, whilst the dark silhouettes of obscured regions trace out complex dust structures. Underlying the entire galaxy is a smooth distribution of cooler red stars that trace Andromeda's evolution over billions of years.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a large spiral galaxy — a galaxy type home to the majority of the stars in the Universe — and this detailed view, which captures over 100 million stars, represents a new benchmark for precision studies of this galaxy type . The clarity of these observations will help astronomers to interpret the light from the many galaxies that have a similar structure but lie much further away.

Because the Andromeda Galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth it is a much bigger target on the sky than the galaxies Hubble routinely photographs that are billions of light-years away. In fact its full diameter on the night sky is six times that of the full Moon. To capture the large portion of the galaxy seen here — over 40 000 light-years across — Hubble took 411 images which have been assembled into a mosaic image.

This panorama is the product of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury
(PHAT) programme. Images were obtained from viewing the galaxy in near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths, using the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard Hubble. This view shows the galaxy in its natural visible-light colour as photographed in red and blue filters.

This image is too large to be easily displayed at full resolution and is best appreciated using the zoom tool.

The image was presented today at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Source : www.spacetelescope.org

[VIDEO] 209 Seconds That Will Make You Question Your Entire Existence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbfYsQfNWs

Source :BuzzFeedBlue

A Pair of Black Holes Could Soon Collide And Destroy Their Galaxy

One black hole is not to be messed with, let alone two. Astronomers have discovered what appears to be two supermassive black holes just one light-year apart, setting up a collision so massive it could be release as much energy as 100 million supernovas and destroy it's inside galaxy . Yep.

A Supermassive Black Hole is the largest type of black hole, on the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses and are found in the center of almost all massive galaxies.In the case of the Milky Way, the Supermassive black hole is believed to correspond with the location of Sagittarius A*(At the center).

Thankfully, the black holes are far away in a remote galaxy called PG 1302-102. The collision itself, if astronomers have done the calculations right, will happen in the next million years. That's a pretty unfathomably long time for humans, but just a blink of an eye in cosmic time.

Astronomers are excited about the discovery because a pair of black holes could yield valuable information about theorized but never directly detected gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that exist according to Einstein's theory of general relativity. If the two black holes collide, most of the released energy will be in the form of gravitational waves, literally bending the fabric of space-time.

But for now, the pair of black holes still need to be 100 percent confirmed. When two black holes so far away are close to one another, astronomers on Earth can only see it as a particular flicker of light. Astronomers need to rule the flicker out as a statistical anomaly. Still, in the long history of the universe, black holes have almost certainly collided before. Destroying whole galaxies in one fell swoop is not just science fiction.

Source : gizmodo.com

New Hubble Telescope Photos Capture One of the Universe's Most Stunning Formations

In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope captured what would become one of history's most enduring images of the universe: The Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation. Now, 20 years later, Hubble has released a collection of brand new, high-definition shots of the iconic formation. 

If you thought the universe was hauntingly beautiful before, wait until you see these.

Behold:

Eagle Nebula Captured by Hubble Space Telescope (Click Image to Download)

Comprised of three towers of gas, dust and space matter, structures like this are not altogether uncommon in star-forming regions. But as the Hubble website notes, the Pillars of Creation are some of the most photogenic and mesmerizing examples ever seen.

"The Hubble image of the pillars taken in 1995 is so popular that it has appeared in film and television, on tee-shirts and pillows, and even on postage stamps," HubbleSite writes.

The telescope used the Wide Field Camera 3 to capture the stunning new images. It sees near-infrared light, visible like and near-ultraviolet radiation, and also has higher resolution and a bigger field of view than the camera that came before it.

This time, Hubble also captured an image taken in infra-red light, which "penetrates much of the obscuring dust and gas and unveils a more unfamiliar view of the pillars," according to the website. "Here newborn stars, hidden in the visible-light view, can be seen forming within the pillars themselves."



Not everything is happy-go-lucky in Pillars of Creation-land, however. Despite their name, the new shots indicate that the pillars are also being worn down by the very stars they are helping to incubate. "The dust and gas in these pillars is seared by intense radiation from the young stars forming within them, and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars," HubbleSite explains.

Arizona State University's Paul Scowen, who helped lead Hubble's first deep dive into the Eagle Nebula, stressed just how incredible our sightings of the Pillars are. "I'm impressed by how transitory these structures are," he said in a press release. "We have caught these pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution."

Interestingly, environments like the Eagle Nebula and other star-forming regions were instrumental in our own solar system's development. "What that means is when you look at the environment of the Eagle Nebula or other star-forming regions, you're looking at exactly the kind of nascent environment that our Sun formed in," Scowen said.



Source : mic.com

8 new planets found in 'Goldilocks zone', NASA may find Earth's 'twin' very soon

(Click Image To download)

NASA is closer than ever to finding a twin for the Earth, astronomers said today, announcing the discovery of eight new planets that circle in the habitable zones of their stars.

Two of the eight are the most Earth-like of any known planets found so far outside our solar system, astronomers told the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.

The pair are likely to have hard, rocky surfaces in addition to being an orbiting distance from their stars that is neither too hot nor too cold for water and possibly life to exist, astronomers said. The discovery doubles the number of known planets that are close in size to the Earth and believed to be in the so-called "Goldilocks zone" of the stars they orbit.



Representational image. AFP

"We are now closer than we have ever been to finding a twin for the Earth around another star," said Fergal Mullally of the Kepler Science Office. "These candidates represent the closest analogs to the Earth's own system found to date."

The worlds were found with the help of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission, a space telescope which has scoured more than 150,000 stars for planets beyond our solar system since its launch in 2009. The latest trove of candidate planets found by Kepler and announced today was 554, bringing the total potential planets to 4,175.

Scientists have recently verified the existence of the 1,000th planet found by Kepler.

"Three of the newly validated planets are located in their distant suns' habitable zone, the range of distances from the host star where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet," NASA said in a statement. "Of the three, two are likely made of rock, like Earth."

While it is intriguing to consider the possibility of life existing on another planet like ours, the two best candidates are so far away that learning more about them presents a big challenge.

Source : firstpost

This One Picture Will Make You Realize How Big The Universe Actually Is

Milky Way Galaxy (Click Image to Download)

We’ve all heard the universe is a very big place, but this image from Alex Grossman really drives that concept home.

The question: How far has humanity’s influence reached?

The very first thing created by humanity that left our tiny planet wasn’t a satellite or space ship, it was the broadcasts from a world obsession with radio. This image shows how far radio broadcasts will have reached in our galaxy, the Milky Way, by the time that technology is 200 years old. Considering we only started broadcasting in 1880, this map actually represents our reach in 2080.

In the vacuum of space radio waves travel at the speed of light, so our entire influence on the universe has now traveled just 135 light years away from Earth (1 “light year” equals the distance light travels in 1 year). That’s right, the tiny blue dot in the image below is how far every single action by humanity has reached. Feel tiny yet?



How does that compare to our furthest traveling spacecraft? The Voyager 1, which is now traveling almost outside the influence of our Sun, is only about 18 light hours away from the Earth. That’s about 97,000 times smaller than the blue dot in these pictures.

Now for the real kicker.

How many galaxies like our Milky Way are in the entire Universe? No one knows the actual figure because we can’t see to the outside edge (if there is one), but the amount we can see in the observable universe is estimated to be… wait for it…

…more than 170 billion galaxies.

There it is. We are really, really, very, amazingly, incredibly, so, small.


Milky Way galaxy rendering by Nick Risinger

Source : www.visualnews.com

Large Asteroids to Flyby Earth in January Through March. Should Humans Worry?

A view of the asteroid Lutetia from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft (Click Image to download)

Asteroids are headed in Earth's direction and with most of them about as wide as a double-decker bus, a collision would most likely result in significant damage. However, while experts warn against the potential dangers of these asteroids, they also say that it is unlikely that these will veer off course and hit the planet.

According to NASA's Near Earth Object Program, there will be 43 asteroids flying close to Earth in January and 25 in February. In March, the number further drops to 15. The biggest threat for January is the asteroid 2007 EJ slated to closely approach the planet on Jan. 12. With a maximum diameter of nearly 1 mile, the asteroid is traveling at around 34,500 miles per hour.

The next-biggest asteroid threat for the first month of the year is the 1991 VE. It features a diameter of 0.87 miles and is expected to skim past the planet on Jan. 17. On Jan. 15 and 23, 0.68-mile wide asteroids will be flying by, the 2014 UF206 and the 2062 Aten, respectively.

At 0.75 miles wide, the 2003 YK118 will follow in Feb. 27. On the same day, the biggest asteroid threat for the quarter, the 1.4-mile wide 2000 EE14 can be expected. For March, the biggest an asteroid will get will be the 2002 GM2, which measures 0.68 miles in diameter. It's scheduled to come close to Earth on March 3.

The 2000 EE14 will also not only be the biggest for the quarter but it will also be flying by the closest, coming in up to nearly 17 million miles within the proximity of the Earth's center.

Alarmed that about a million undetected asteroids are flying around in space right now, scientists launched Asteroid Day to raise awareness and prevent the disaster that happened 65 million years ago from happening as much as possible.

According to NASA, the agency is aware of more than 1,500 PHAs or potentially hazardous asteroids. These are defined using parameters that measure how big of a potential an asteroid has for dangerously coming close to the planet. But just because an asteroid has a high potential doesn't mean that it will impact Earth. The measure of potential is there to simply gauge just how big the possibility of a threat is. PHAs are constantly monitored to improve predictions for close-approach statistics, which in turn improves predictions for threat and impact.

Source : techtimes , Photo by ESA

Here is a tour of No Man's Sky's mathematically generated incredible universe

When released this year, this amazing new next-gen sci-fi video game, “No Man's Sky”, will cover about 18 quintillion visit-able planets and it would take about five billion years to visit each of those planets -- no breaks allowed.  This is quite a remarkable concept, even if we’ll only get to see a little portion of what No Man’s Sky is set to offer. Presently in development by self-governing UK-based studio, Hello Games, the simulated landscape is procedurally created by an algorithmic programming system that sorts what Hello Games creator, Sean Murray, tells Game Informer in the video below is "a series of very simple formulae laid on top of each other to create something quite complex".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpDn5qPp3s

What this allows for is unbelievable detail and limitless material to discover; zero loading time; and nearly no content kept on a disc, your PC or PS4 console, or even in the cloud. For people among us who have been a little underwhelmed with what next generation consoles, the Playstation 4 and XBox One, have so far provided, this amazing game is well and accurately taking benefit of their exceptional processing power to make something remarkable. Watch the video linked above by Game Informer to perceive exactly how this game is being created. I must say, after learning about this game, I think 2015 is going to be a worthy year for gaming.

Source: Kotaku, Game Informer

The Milky Way’s New Neighbor May Tell Us Things About the Universe

(Click Image to Download)

As part of the Local Group, a collection of 54 galaxies and dwarf galaxies that measures 10 million light years in diameter, the Milky Way has no shortage of neighbors. However, refinements made in the field of astronomy in recent years are leading to the observation of neighbors that were previously unseen. This, in turn, is changing our view of the local universe to one where things are a lot more crowded.



Dwarf spheroidal galaxies, like this one seen in the constellation Fornax, may exist in greater numbers than previously thought. Credit: ESO/Digital Sky Survey 2 (Click Image to Download)

For instance, scientists working out of the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Karachai-Cherkessia, Russia, recently found a previously undetected dwarf galaxy that exists 7 million light years away. The discovery of this galaxy, named KKs3, and those like it is an exciting prospect for scientists, since they can tell us much about how stars are born in our universe.

The Russian team, led by Prof Igor Karachentsev of the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), used the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to locate KKs3 in the southern sky near the constellation of Hydrus. The discovery occurred back in August 2014, when they finalized their observations a series of stars that have only one ten-thousandth the mass of the Milky Way.

Such dwarf galaxies are far more difficult to detect than others due to a number of distinct characteristics. KKs3 is what is known as a dwarf spheroid (or dSph) galaxy, a type that has no spiral arms like the Milky Way and also suffers from an absence of raw materials (like dust and gas). Since they lack the materials to form new stars, they are generally composed of older, fainter stars.



Image of the KKR 25 dwarf spheroid galaxy obtained by the Special Astrophysical Observatory using the HST. Credit: SAO RAS (Click Image to download)

In addition, these galaxies are typically found in close proximity to much larger galaxies, like Andromeda, which appear to have gobbled up their gas and dust long ago. Being faint in nature, and so close to far more luminous objects, is what makes them so tough to spot by direct observation.

Team member Prof Dimitry Makarov, also of the Special Astrophysical Observatory, described the process: “Finding objects like Kks3 is painstaking work, even with observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope. But with persistence, we’re slowly building up a map of our local neighborhood, which turns out to be less empty than we thought. It may be that are a huge number of dwarf spheroidal galaxies out there, something that would have profound consequences for our ideas about the evolution of the cosmos.”

Painstaking is no exaggeration. Since they are devoid of materials like clouds of gas and dust fields, scientists are forced to spot these galaxies by identifying individual stars. Because of this, only one other isolated dwarf spheroidal has been found in the Local Group: a dSph known as KKR 25, which was also discovered by the Russian research team back in 1999.

But despite the challenges of spotting them, astronomers are eager to find more examples of dSph galaxies. As it stands, it is believed that these isolated spheroids must have been born out of a period of rapid star formation, before the galaxies were stripped of their dust and gas or used them all up.

Studying more of these galaxies can therefore tell us much about the process star formation in our universe. The Russian team expects that the task will become easier in the coming years as the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope begin service.

Much like the Spitzer Space Telescope, these next-generation telescopes are optimized for infrared detection and will therefore prove very useful in picking out faint stars. This, in turn, will also give us a more complete understanding of our universe and all that it holds.

Source : universe today

NASA plans to fix Mars Rover Opportunity's Amnesia via Hacking

NASA's Opportunity (Click Image to download)

It’s been more than 10 years since NASA’s rover Opportunity landed on the red planet. The rover has been exploring Mars ever since and has provided a lot of information for the understanding of the red planet. NASA has also stated that the rover Opportunity has lasted on Mars more than they ever anticipated it to. But the recent memory problems suggest that the rover may be coming to an end of its life. But still NASA plans to sort out the issue through hacking into the software of the rover.

NASA has explained that the rover like a typical computer has two memory parts, one volatile like the RAM of our computer which totally gets wiped out when we shutdown or reboot our computer, and the other non-volatile which acts like the secondary storage such as the hard disk on our computer. The non-volatile memory preserves data even after rebooting or shutting down.

The rover Opportunity has a problem in its volatile memory which may be related to the ageing hardware on the rover.

The data cannot be saved by the rover in its volatile memory because an error occurs so the rover then has to save the data in its non-volatile memory.

The problem then arises as the non-volatile memory even though large but still has a finite limit to it, meaning the rover can’t operate for long in this condition.

Even though the rover can operate normally at present, but NASA plans to fix the issue by hacking into the software of the rover and disregard the bad patch of the volatile memory that causes this issue.

NASA does understand that there’s a chance that the process may cause permanent damage to the rover but since it has outperformed its anticipated life, NASA plans to move ahead with the solution nonetheless.

Source : full-timewhistle.com

Hubble captures image of galaxy 60 million light-years away

Photo: Hubble/NASA and ESA) IC 335 located at Fornax Galaxy (Click Image to Dwonload)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a galaxy far, far away …

Located 60 million light-years away, the galaxy IC 335 is part of a galaxy group containing three other galaxies, and located in the Fornax Galaxy.

NASA shared the stunning space image on Facebook Dec. 24, and it has been liked more than 33,000 times.

Because many of the characteristics of a galaxy are only visible from its face, NASA says it's difficult to classify the "edge on" IC 335.

According to NASA, the "45,000 light-year-long galaxy could be classified as an SO type," or lenticular galaxy, which typically have a thin stellar disk and a bulge and fall between a true spiral and an elliptical galaxy.

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy IC 335 in front of a backdrop of distant galaxies. IC 335 is part of a galaxy group containing three other galaxies, and located in the Fornax Galaxy Cluster 60 million light-years away.

As seen in this image, the disk of IC 335 appears edge-on from the vantage point of Earth. This makes it harder for astronomers to classify it, as most of the characteristics of a galaxy’s morphology — the arms of a spiral or the bar across the center — are only visible on its face. Still, the 45 000 light-year-long galaxy could be classified as an S0 type.

These lenticular galaxies are an intermediate state in galaxy morphological classification schemes between true spiral and elliptical galaxies. They have a thin stellar disk and a bulge, like spiral galaxies, but in contrast to typical spiral galaxies they have used up most of the interstellar medium. Only a few new stars can be created out of the material that is left and the star formation rate is very low. Hence, the population of stars in S0 galaxies consists mainly of aging stars, very similar to the star population in elliptical galaxies.

As S0 galaxies have only ill-defined spiral arms they are easily mistaken for elliptical galaxies if they are seen inclined face-on or edge-on as IC 335 here. And indeed, despite the morphological differences between S0 and elliptical class galaxies, they share some common characteristics, like typical sizes and spectral features.

Both classes are also deemed "early-type" galaxies, because they are evolving passively. However, while elliptical galaxies may be passively evolving when we observe them, they have usually had violent interactions with other galaxies in their past. In contrast, S0 galaxies are either aging and fading spiral galaxies, which never had any interactions with other galaxies, or they are the aging result of a single merger between two spiral galaxies in the past. The exact nature of these galaxies is still a matter of debate.

Credit:  USA TODAY /ESA/Hubble and NASA