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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 15 2018, @06:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the should-be-a-tv-series dept.

SPARCS, a NASA-funded CubeSat mission led by Arizona State University, will monitor nearby red dwarf stars for flare activity and sunspots in order to assess their habitability:

In 2021, a spacecraft the size of a Cheerios box will carry a small telescope into Earth orbit on an unusual mission. Its task is to monitor the flares and sunspots of small stars to assess how habitable the space environment is for planets orbiting them.

The spacecraft, known as the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS for short, is a new NASA-funded space telescope. The mission, including spacecraft design, integration and resulting science, is led by Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE).

"This is a mission to the borderland of astrophysics and astrobiology," said Evgenya Shkolnik, assistant professor in SESE and principal investigator for the SPARCS mission. "We're going to study the habitability and high-energy environment around stars that we call M dwarfs."

[...] Because M dwarfs are so plentiful, astronomers estimate that our galaxy alone contains roughly 40 billion — that's billion with a B — rocky planets in habitable zones around their stars. This means that most of the habitable-zone planets in our galaxy orbit M dwarfs. In fact, the nearest one, dubbed Proxima b, lies just 4.2 light-years away, which is on our doorstep in astronomical terms.


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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:09PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:09PM (#622833)

    Yeah, I know - that's not what the title says. But, that's what I read a minute ago. Can't sleep, tired, cranky, I looked at the title, and saw something about red dwarves' bad habits. Always smoking foul smelling pipes, or chewing something that resembles tobacco, and gossiping, drinking - well, read it for yourself.

    https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258990/chapters/2592061 [archiveofourown.org]

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:25PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:25PM (#623134) Journal

    Unfortunately for him, by hobbit standards, dwarves have a lot of unsavory and downright annoying habits. Very bad habits

    Very bad habbits. Terible! Sad.

    Therefore the administration will stick to the practice of discriminating against Red Dwarves and stick to hiring tried and true Orange Ooompa Loompas instead. Thank you.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.