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Satellites’ launch to give boost to NASA’s ‘return to Moon’ mission

May 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 22 (ANI): NASA’s return to the moon will get a boost in June with the launch of two satellites that will return a wealth of data about Earth’s nearest neighbor.

On May 21, the agency outlined the upcoming missions of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.

The spacecraft will launch together June 17 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Using a suite of seven instruments, LRO will help identify safe landing sites for future human explorers, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology.

LCROSS will seek a definitive answer about the presence of water ice at the lunar poles.

It will use the spent second stage Atlas Centaur rocket in an unprecedented way that will culminate with two spectacular impacts on the moon’s surface.

“These two missions will provide exciting new information about the moon, our nearest neighbor,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington.

“Imaging will show dramatic landscapes and areas of interest down to one-meter resolution. The data also will provide information about potential new uses of the moon. These teams have done a tremendous job designing and building these two spacecraft,” he added.

LRO’s instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it in the far ultraviolet spectrum.

The satellite’s instruments will help explain how the lunar radiation environment may affect humans and measure radiation absorption with a plastic that is like human tissue.

LRO’s instruments also will allow scientists to explore the moon’s deepest craters, look beneath its surface for clues to the location of water ice, and identify and explore both permanently lit and permanently shadowed regions.

High-resolution imagery from its camera will help identify landing sites and characterize the moon’s topography and composition.

A miniaturized radar will image the poles and test the system’s communications capabilities.

“LRO is an amazingly sophisticated spacecraft,” said Craig Tooley, LRO project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Its suite of instruments will work in concert to send us data in areas where we’ve been hungry for information for years,” he added. (ANI)

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NASA’s Kepler mission blasts off in search of Earth-like planets

March 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 7 (ANI): NASA’s Kepler mission, which would search other Earth-like planets, has been successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, US, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II.

Kepler is designed to find the first Earth-size planets orbiting stars at distances where water could pool on the planet’s surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

“It was a stunning launch,” said Kepler Project Manager James Fanson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“Our team is thrilled to be a part of something so meaningful to the human race – Kepler will help us understand if our Earth is unique or if others like it are out there,” he added.

Engineers acquired a signal from Kepler at 12:11 a.m. on March 7th, after it separated from its spent third-stage rocket and entered its final sun-centered orbit, trailing 950 miles behind Earth.

The spacecraft is generating its own power from its solar panels.

“Kepler now has the perfect place to watch more than 100,000 stars for signs of planets,” said William Borucki, the mission’s science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

“Everyone is very excited as our dream becomes a reality. We are on the verge of learning if other Earths are ubiquitous in the galaxy,” he added.

Engineers have begun to check Kepler to ensure it is working properly, a process called “commissioning” that will take about 60 days.

In about a month or less, NASA will send up commands for Kepler to eject its dust cover and make its first measurements.

After another month of calibrating Kepler’s single instrument, a wide-field charge-couple device camera, the telescope will begin to search for planets.

The first planets to roll out on the Kepler “assembly line” are expected to be the portly “hot Jupiters” – gas giants that circle close and fast around their stars.

Neptune-size planets will most likely be found next, followed by rocky ones as small as Earth.

The true Earth analogs – Earth-sized planets orbiting stars like our sun at distances where surface water, and possibly life, could exist – would take at least three years to discover and confirm.

Ground-based telescopes also will contribute to the mission by verifying some of the finds.

In the end, Kepler will give us our first look at the frequency of Earth-size planets in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as the frequency of Earth-size planets that could theoretically be habitable. (ANI)

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NASA spacecraft all set to search for Earth-like worlds

February 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 20 (ANI): NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is all set to be moved to the launch pad and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5.

It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth – rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface.

Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars,” he added.

The mission will spend three-and-a-half years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy.

It is expected to find hundreds of planets the size of Earth and larger at various distances from their stars.

If Earth-size planets are common in the habitable zone, Kepler could find dozens; if those planets are rare, Kepler might find none.

In the end, the mission will be humanity’s first step toward answering a question posed by the ancient Greeks: are there other worlds like ours or are we alone?

“Finding that most stars have Earths implies that the conditions that support the development of life could be common throughout our galaxy,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, alifornia.

“Finding few or no Earths indicates that we might be alone,” he added.

The Kepler telescope is specially designed to detect the periodic dimming of stars that planets cause as they pass by. Some star systems are oriented in such a way that their planets cross in front of their stars, as seen from our Earthly point of view.

As the planets pass by, they cause their stars’ light to slightly dim, or wink.

The telescope can detect even the faintest of these winks, registering changes in brightness of only 20 parts per million.

To achieve this resolution, Kepler will use the largest camera ever launched into space, a 95-megapixel array of charged couple devices, known as CCDs. (ANI)

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Satellites’ launch to give boost to NASA’s ‘return to Moon’ mission

NASA’s Kepler mission blasts off in search of Earth-like planets

NASA spacecraft all set to search for Earth-like worlds

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