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In the light of recent events, where the possibility of buying the rights to name exoplanets has been advertised, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) wishes to inform the public that such schemes have no bearing on the official naming process. The IAU wholeheartedly welcomes the public's interest to be involved in recent discoveries, but would like to strongly stress the importance of having a unified naming procedure.
Wired Space Photos
NASA has selected a $200 million mission to carry out a full-sky survey for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. The space observatory, called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is scheduled for a 2017 launch.
Like the currently operational Kepler Space Telescope, TESS will be in the lookout for exoplanets that orbit in front of their host stars, resulting in a slight dip in starlight. This dip is known as a “transit” and Kepler has revolutionized our understanding about planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy by applying this effective technique. As of January 2013, Kepler has spotted 2,740 exoplanetary candidates.
Although Kepler’s powerful optics have allowed astronomers an unprecedented look into multiplanetary systems, identifying worlds as small as Mercury to many times the size of Jupiter, it is restricted to gazing at a small field of view — accounting for a mere 0.28 percent of the sky. Tiny it may be, but 145,000 main sequence stars fill that view, providing us with a gargantuan amount of transit data for hundreds of exoplanets.
But TESS will be surveying the entire sky, supercharging our profound quest to understand how many stars like our own could host worlds, not too dissimilar to Earth, in their habitable zones.
.[/quote]New U.S. rocket blasts off from Virginia launch pad(Reuters) - A privately owned rocket built in partnership with NASA to haul cargo to the International Space Station blasted off on Sunday for a debut test flight from a new commercial spaceport in Virginia.
The 13-story Antares rocket, developed and flown by Orbital Sciences Corp, lifted off at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) from a Virginia-owned and operated launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.
"Beautiful view," said NASA launch commentator Kyle Herring as live video from the rocket, broadcast on NASA TV, showed the booster riding atop a bright plume of fire above the Atlantic Ocean.
Ten minutes later, the rocket deposited its payload - a 8,380-pound (3,800-kg) dummy capsule - into an orbit 158 miles above the planet, fulfilling the primary goal of the test flight.
Orbital Sciences and privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, hold NASA contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the space station, a $100 billion research outpost that flies about 250 miles above Earth.
NASA turned to commercial suppliers after retiring the space shuttles in 2011.
Flight controllers radioed news of Antares' successful debut to the station crew shortly after launch.
"Wahoo, that's super," replied station commander Chris Hadfield, with the Canadian Space Agency.
"Congratulations to all concerned. That bodes well for all of our futures," Hadfield said.
On its next flight, scheduled for late June or early July, another Antares rocket will carry a Cygnus cargo ship on a demonstration mission to the station.
California-based SpaceX completed three test flights and last year began delivering cargo to the station under its $1.6 billion contract
An image taken from a video of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo as it took off on Monday for its first supersonic flight.
By KENNETH CHANG
For the more than 500 space tourists who have signed up for a trip on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Monday was a milestone: the day the spaceship that will be carrying them aloft made its first powered flight and broke the sound barrier for its first time.
“We will be going to space at the end of this year,” Mr. Branson said in a telephone interview after the test flight over Mojave, Calif. Or, he added, possibly in the first quarter of next year. He and his children are to be passengers on that first flight.
The incredible vortex of spiraling clouds that churns above Saturn's north pole is seen in all its blood-red glory in this stunning image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, released today (April 29).
Taking advantage of a new orbital trajectory that puts it high above Saturn's rings and poles, Cassini acquired the near-infrared images used to make this composite back on Nov. 27, 2012. The resulting image is false color -- our eyes aren't sensitive to those particular wavelengths of light -- but still no less amazing.
Detection of two new exoplanets with Kepler, SOPHIE and HARPS-NAn international team of astronomers, including Alexandre Santerne of the EXOEarths team at CAUP, identified and characterized two new exoplanets, thanks to combined observations from the Kepler space telescope, plus SOPHIE and HARPS-N spectrographs.
These planets, named KOI-200 b and KOI-889 b are among the first detected with the new high-accuracy spectrograph HARPS-N, the northern hemisphere counterpart of the most prolific exoplanet hunter, HARPS (ESO). CAUP researcher Alexandre Santerne commented: "The SOPHIE spectrograph was already playing an important role in the characterization of Kepler planets by unveiling the true nature of the candidates and measuring the mass of giant planets. With the new HARPS-N spectrograph, with an even better accuracy, we expect to characterize much smaller exoplanets, hopefully down to the size of the Earth."
