Space Stories: NASA’s Probe Explorers, Finding Exoplanet Atmospheres, and an Australian Space Antenna

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Universe Today: “NASA Announces a New Class of Space Missions: Probe Explorers“

NASA has sent a whole host of spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond. They range from crewed ships to orbit and to the Moon to robotic explorers. Among them are a range of mission classes from Flagships to Discovery Class programs. Now a new category has been announced: Probe Explorers. This new category will fill the gap between Flagship and smaller missions. Among them are two proposed missions; the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite and the Probe Far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics.

—uChicago News: “UChicago Researchers Use New Method of Finding Atmospheres in Distant Planets“

It is a major goal of astronomical research to find planets other than Earth that might be suitable for sustaining life. There are a number of factors which many scientists agree are essential to a planet being habitable, but an important one is whether or not a planet has an atmosphere. Scientists have found other rocky, Earth-like exoplanets, but none that we can definitively say have atmospheres. Finding these planets will reveal insights into how such atmospheres are formed and retained, so that we can better predict which planets could be habitable. A study conducted by University of Chicago PhD student Qiao Xue with Prof. Jacob Bean’s group has demonstrated a new way to determine if faraway exoplanets have an atmosphere—and showed that it was simpler and more efficient than previous methods. The new technique, when applied to more planets, has the potential to help us learn more about patterns in atmosphere formation.

—European Space Agency: “ESA Crowns New Deep Space Antenna in Australia“

A giant wakes as the Sun sets in Western Australia. The workers can finally rest easy after more than a day spent using an enormous crane to lift the colossal 122-tonne, 35-metre diameter reflector dish and crown ESA’s newest deep space communication antenna. With the dish and its quadrupole now installed, ESA is on track to inaugurate its fourth deep-space antenna, and second at the New Norcia site in Australia, by the end of 2025. Referred to as NNO3, the New Norcia 3 antenna will allow spacecraft to send and receive more valuable data collected from onboard scientific instruments and vital flight instructions for mission operations.