Kepler 22B

Awesome. Absolutely awesome. Now find one closer!!!

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

and from the second article

US military pays SETI to check Kepler-22b for aliens

 

Read more about it HERE and also HERE

Born in the 80's

Was BORN in the 80's. We are the last generation who learned to play in the street, we are the 1st who played video games, the last to record songs off the radio on cassettes, the pioneers of Walkman's and chat rooms. We Learned how to program the VCR before anyone else, play from the Atari, to Super Nintendo. We are the generation of the Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, Gumby, Saved by the Bell, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Traveled in cars without seat belts or air-bags -lived without cell phones. -We did not have flat screens, surround sound, iPods, Facebook, Twitter computers & the Internet... but nevertheless we had a GREAT freaking time... I'm an 80's baby ♥

This week in space

in

Course excellent, adjustment postponed

This makes me very very happy. I can't wait for this thing to touch down and start exploring!

Excellent launch precision for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission has forestalled the need for an early trajectory correction maneuver, now not required for a month or more.


Read more HERE

 

Good and bad news comes with NASA’s 2012 budget

We need to pour more money into space exploration and research before China is eons ahead of us.

On November 14, President Obama signed an Appropriations bill that solidified NASA’s budget for fiscal year 2012. The space agency will get $17.8 billion. That’s $648 million less than last year’s funding and $924 million below what the President had asked for. But it’s still better than the $16.8 billion proposed earlier this year by the House of Representatives.

Read more HERE

 

Caltech-led team of astronomers finds 18 new planets

I love that we are finding new planets a few different ways and that we are finding an incredible amount of them. Maybe soon we'll be able to detect life on them, or at least find some good candidates to listen to.

Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Read more HERE

 

Listening to the stars

While I'd rather be listening to planets with the potential of having life on them... this is good reserach too.

It is almost night on the island of Puerto Rico. Astronomer Joanna Rankin raises her head toward the sky. A few of the brightest stars shine through blue cracks in a ragged dome of gray clouds. To her back, a jungle throbs with the insistent call of frogs. In front of her, a giant bowl made of perforated metal dips steeply and rises on the other side of the valley, a thousand feet away. It looks like a colossal contact lens dropped from outer space.

Read more HERE

 

China post office offers letters from space

Ummm huge gimmick.

China's post office is hoping to boost business by allowing customers to send letters postmarked from space. Emails will be sent to a computer aboard Tiangong-1, a spacecraft currently orbiting the earth, and rerouted to a special China Space Post Office branch on the ground in Beijing, the country's space programme said on its website.

Read more HERE