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posted by martyb on Tuesday January 12 2016, @10:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the 'dimming'-prospects-looking-up dept.

Despite mechanical failures, the Kepler space observatory continues to find exoplanets in its extended K2 mission phase:

Between 2009 and 2013, Kepler became the most successful planet-hunting machine ever, discovering at least 1,030 planets and more than 4,600 possible others in a single patch of sky. When a mechanical failure stripped the spacecraft of its ability to point precisely among the stars, engineers reinvented it in 2014 as the K2 mission, which looks at different parts of the cosmos for shorter periods of time.

In its first year of observing, K2 has netted more than 100 confirmed exoplanets, says astronomer Ian Crossfield at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They include a surprising number of systems in which more than one planet orbits the same star. The K2 planets are also orbiting hotter stars than are many of the Kepler discoveries.

[...] The original Kepler mission was designed to answer a specific question: what fraction of Sun-like stars have Earth-size planets around them? Unbound by those constraints — even if not as good at pointing itself — K2 has been able to explore wider questions of planetary origin and evolution. "Now we get to look at a much bigger variety," says Steve Howell, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

And because K2 looks at stars that are generally brighter and closer to Earth than Kepler did, the exoplanets that the mission finds are likely to be the best studied for the foreseeable future. This is because they are near enough to allow astronomers to explore them with other telescopes on Earth and in space.

Ten Multi-planet Systems from K2 Campaigns 1 & 2 and the Masses of Two Hot Super-Earths

Kepler & K2 Science Center


Original Submission

Related Stories

Planetary Security - How to Hide the Activity of an Entire Planet 53 comments

Two astronomers at Columbia University have suggested earthlings could use lasers to conceal the presence of Earth from intelligent life on other planets:

RAS [Royal Astronomical Socitety] notes that several prominent scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have cautioned against humanity broadcasting our presence to intelligent life on other planets. Other civilizations might try to find Earth-like planets using the same techniques we do, including looking for the dip in light when a planet moves directly in front of the star it orbits.

These events — transits — are the main way that the Kepler mission and similar projects search for planets around other stars. So far Kepler alone has confirmed more than 1,000 planets using this technique, with tens of these worlds similar in size to the Earth. [Professor David] Kipping and [graduate student Alex] Teachey speculate that alien scientists may use this approach to locate our planet, which will be clearly in the "habitable zone" of the Sun, where the temperature is right for liquid water, and so be a promising place for life.

Hawking and others are concerned that extraterrestrials might wish to take advantage of the Earth's resources, and that their visit, rather than being benign, could be as devastating as when Europeans first travelled to the Americas.

[...] According to the authors, emitting a continuous 30 MW laser for about ten hours, once a year, would be enough to eliminate the transit signal, at least in visible light. The energy needed is comparable to that collected by the International Space Station in a year. A chromatic cloak, effective at all wavelengths, is more challenging, and would need a large array of tuneable lasers with a total power of 250 MW.

Previously:
Narrow SETI Targets by Looking at Places Where Earth Transits can be Seen
Kepler Extended Mission Finds More Exoplanets
NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Earth-Like Planet In Sun-Like Star's Habitable Zone


Original Submission

NASA Retires the Kepler Space Telescope after It Runs Out of Hydrazine 15 comments

NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets - more planets even than stars - NASA's Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.

"As NASA's first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm. Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars."

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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2016, @10:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2016, @10:57AM (#288593)

    On a thousand planets and spreading out, soon the hoomons will stumble through a wormhole and attempt to genocide some liquid people. The evil hoomans just can't leave sedentary isolationists alone. The liquid people will try to fight back with their army of loyal solids, but the liquid people will lose. The evil hoomans will defeat the liquid people, and then the evil hoomans will gloat.