Tag: Kepler
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Hubble Space Telescope boosts evidence for first exomoon seen circling alien planet
An artist’s impression shows the Jupiter-sized exoplanet Kepler-1625b transiting its parent star with the Neptune-sized candidate exomoon in tow. (Dan Durda Illustration) With a lot of help from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers now feel confident enough to publish their evidence for the first moon detected in orbit around a planet beyond our solar system.…
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Dwindling fuel levels and a balky thruster can’t keep Kepler down
Artist’s concept of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: NASA After downloading science data and bypassing a balky thruster, NASA’s Kepler mission has resumed its search for planets around other stars after a two-month pause in observations, but engineers expect the spacecraft to soon run out of fuel. NASA said in a statement Wednesday that the Kepler…
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NASA’s Kepler telescope nears end of mission
Artist’s concept of the Kepler observatory. Credit: NASA Nearly a decade after launching from Cape Canaveral on a planet-hunting quest that has netted 2,650 new confirmed worlds beyond our solar system, NASA’s Kepler telescope has paused its observations after on-board sensors detected it is running low on fuel. Kepler’s dwindling fuel supply was not a…
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NASA’s Kepler probe suspends planet hunt to download data as fuel runs near empty
News Brief: NASA has hit the pause button on observations by its most prolific planet-hunting probe, the Kepler space telescope, so that it can download 51 days’ worth science data without interruption. The reason? Kepler’s fuel tanks are close to empty. After the download, Kepler will resume data gathering — that is, assuming there’s any fuel…
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The K2-138 system: the first exoplanet system discovered by citizen scientists
NASA has announced the discovery of a planetary system around star K2-138. The discovery was the first of its kind, being made by citizen scientists using data from the K2 mission as part of the Zooniverse Exoplanet Explorers effort. This detection is the first multi-planet system discovered exclusively by crowdsourcing – the practice of obtaining…
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Our solar system has met its match: AI helps scientists find a star’s eighth planet
We’re not alone. At least when it comes to solar systems with the same number of major planets as ours. NASA today announced details about the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a sunlike star that’s 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet, dubbed Kepler-90i, is a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its…
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NASA’s Kepler space telescope points to 10 new planets in the habitable zone
An artist’s conception highlights the worlds detected by NASA’s Kepler probe. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration) Astronomers say they’ve used NASA’s Kepler space telescope to discover 10 Earth-sized planet candidates where life could lurk. The 10 prospects are a part of a larger pool of 219 exoplanet candidates announced today. One of the newly detected candidates,…
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Astronomers use the music of the spheres to track TRAPPIST-1’s seventh planet
An artist’s conception shows the planet TRAPPIST-1h. (NASA / JPL-Caltech) An international research team led by a University of Washington astronomer has worked out the intricate dance of seven planets circling an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, nailing down the coordinates of the outermost world in the process. The astronomers found that all seven…
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Astronomers round up the unusual suspects for ‘alien megastructure’ star
This illustration shows a star behind a shattered comet. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech) That mysterious “alien megastructure” star is still a mystery, but the most plausible explanations appear to be dense patches of interstellar gas or dust that just happened to pass in front of the star. That’s the upshot of analyses conducted by the…
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Techstars grad Kepler Communications raises $5M to launch mini satellites by 2017 and double its team
Kepler CEO Mina Mitry. Kepler Communications, a Techstars Seattle graduate building telecom infrastructure for space, just secured $5 million in seed funding. New York venture capital firm IA Ventures led the round. The Toronto-based startup will use the funds to grow its team and launch two tiny satellites into space in the next 15 months. Previously: Startup…