Space Stories: Rogue Exoplanets, ISS Power Problems, and Eco-Friendly Airlines

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of a rogue exoplanet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Space.com : “400 Earth-size Rogue Planets could be Wandering the Milky Way“

New predictions suggest an upcoming NASA space telescope could spot over 400 Earth-mass worlds hidden throughout the Milky Way that have “gone rogue” and therefore wander our galaxy alone.  Such orphan worlds are thought to start their lives in a planetary system, akin to the solar system, but get kicked at some point out by a mechanism thus far unknown. Despite the familiar picture of planets neatly orbiting a star, new research suggests such orphaned starless worlds may outnumber stars in the Milky Way by 20 to 1. This implies untethered worlds in our galaxy are around six times more common than planets orbiting parent stars. 

—ABC News : “NASA Power Outage Temporarily Halts Contact with Space Station“

A NASA power outage disrupted communication between Mission Control and the International Space Station on Tuesday. Mission Control couldn’t send commands to the station and talk with the seven astronauts in orbit. The power outage hit as upgrade work was underway in the building at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Space station program manager Joel Montalbano said neither the astronauts nor station were ever in any danger and that backup control systems took over within 90 minutes. The crew was notified of the problem through Russian communication systems, within 20 minutes of the outage.

—GeekWire : “Boeing and NASA Partner with Alaska and Other Airlines on Eco-friendly X-66A Aircraft“

Boeing and NASA say they’ll collaborate with Seattle-based Alaska Airlines and four other major airlines on the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which aims to put Boeing’s innovative X-66 braced-wing aircraft design through flight tests in the 2028-2029 time frame. The X-66A makes use of a concept known as the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, or TTBW, which features ultra-long, ultra-thin, drag-reducing wings that are stabilized by diagonal struts.

Travel to Moon and Mars Not Most Important Missions for the Public

Posted on by onespaceman2000

While both Buzz Aldrin and I believe that lunar and Martian colonies are important, it would appear the public has other ideas about NASA’s priorities. The graphic above shows in a recent Pew Research Center study indicates the more Americans are interested in monitoring the Earth’s climate as well as watching for asteroids.

Even finding exoplanets that could support life seems to be more important than occupying local moons and planets. I am not sure how that would help us now if we want to spread the risk of living on one planet, as some propose. We are nowhere near sending a probe to exoplanets, let alone getting humans there.

The study has quite a bit to ponder, including:

  • 58% of U.S. adults believe it is essential to include the use of human astronauts in the U.S. space program, while 41% say astronauts are not essential;
  • Some 44% of Americans have a great deal of confidence private companies will make a profit in their space-related ventures;
  • As the public considers the possibilities ahead for ordinary citizens to orbit the Earth in a spacecraft, more Americans say they would not want to orbit the Earth than say they would (58% to 42%); and
  • About seven-in-ten Americans (72%) say it is essential for the U.S. to continue to be a world leader in space exploration, and eight-in-ten (80%) say the space station has been a good investment for the country.

I am not sure the survey shows a lot of consistency in the answers, but this can be a difficult topic at the outset. NASA should just be worried if Americans saw no reason for a space program, which does not seem to be the case. As noted above, the majority of Americans want a strong space program. Let’s see if that helps with the ongoing congressional budget discussions.

A Day in Astronomy: The Anniversary of JWST

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Tomorrow, July 12th, is the first anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). As a result, NASA has a few events planned that you may want to attend.

Here is the schedule from NASA:

  • 6 a.m.: Release of a new Webb image online
  • 6 a.m.: Live interview opportunities begin
    • Webb mission experts will be available to conduct live, remote interviews with broadcast media, in both English and Spanish. Details about scheduling these interviews are available online. Webb experts also are available for interviews outside of this window upon request.
  • 4 p.m.: NASA Science Live online
    • Two Webb experts will be featured on a NASA Science Live episode, discussing how Webb has made an impact in its first year on exploring the distant universe, characterizing exoplanet atmospheres, and understanding the solar system. The show will air live on the NASA Science Live website, as well as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Viewers of this episode can submit questions on social media using the hashtag #UnfoldtheUniverse or by leaving a comment in the chat section of the Facebook or YouTube stream.

Space Quote: Did Harvard Professor Avi Loeb Find Evidence of Intelligent Alien Life?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Characters from SyFy’s television series Battlestar Galactica. (SyFy)

“Our findings open a new frontier in astronomy of studying what lies outside the solar system through microscopes rather than telescopes.”

-Statement by Harvard Professor Avi Loeb to USAToday regarding his recent recovery of what is believed to be fragments of an asteroid from outside our solar system that crashed into the Earth back in 2014. More tests are being conducted on the pieces recovered from the Pacific Ocean to determine whether the material is natural or artificially made. If the latter, it may be the first evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth.

Profile: COSMIC

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. (Jeff Hellermann, NRAO/AUI/NSF)

COSMIC, also known as the Commensal Open-Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster, is part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) by attempting to find technosignatures using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. This new project is a joint venture between the SETI Institute and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The initial plan is to search for these technosignatures among about 40 million star systems.

Technosignature are basically indicators of technology not caused by natural phenomena. Examples include radio signals, pollutants, nighttime lighting, megastructures, or even the fallout from a nuclear war (not very optimistic, I know). This is different than the biosignatures that other astronomers are looking for among exoplanets by studying the composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.  

The NRAO has created a page on the COSMIC project that provides plenty of details.

It is good to see federal funding going into the SETI program again after Congress walked away from the program in 1993. With all the new evidence coming to us regarding the multitude of exoplanets, it only makes sense to have a multi-pronged approach to find alien life, particularly intelligent life.

Let’s hope COSMIC is the start of a new and stronger SETI partnership.