“Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the most important human-made greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Oceans assist in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: phytoplankton accumulate carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and their chlorophyll colours the ocean’s waters. Satellites use this colour to measure chlorophyll, which helps scientists to calculate how much carbon dioxide is absorbed or emitted.”
Video credit: ESA/CCI Ocean Colour/Climate Monitoring User Group/Planetary Visions
“Progress MS-08, identified by NASA as Progress 69 or 69P, is a Progress spacecraft used by Roscosmos to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Progress MS-8 launched on 13 February 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket and docked on 15 February 2018 with the aft docking port of the Zvezda module. The Progress MS-8 spacecraft carries about 2746 kg of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. The spacecraft delivered food, fuel and supplies, including 890 kg of propellant, 46 kg of oxygen and air, 420 kg of water.”
SpotMini concept is a likely candidate for future planetary exploration missions. I predict Mars Rover 2030 mission will borrow a lot from the SpotMini design.
“ESA’s XMM-Newton has spotted surprising changes in the powerful streams of gas from two massive stars, suggesting that colliding stellar winds don’t behave as expected. Massive stars – several times larger than our Sun – lead turbulent lives, burning their nuclear fuel rapidly and pouring large amounts of material into their surroundings throughout their short but sparkling lives.
These fierce stellar winds can carry the equivalent of Earth’s mass in a month and travel at millions of kilometres per hour, so when two such winds collide they unleash enormous amounts of energy. The cosmic clash heats the gas to millions of degrees, making it shine brightly in X-rays.
Normally, colliding winds change little because neither do the stars nor their orbits. However, some massive stars behave dramatically. This is the case with HD 5980, a pairing of two huge stars each 60 times the mass of our Sun and only about 100 million kilometres apart – closer than we are to our star. One had a major outburst in 1994, reminiscent of the eruption that turned Eta Carinae into the second brightest star in the sky for about 18 years in the 19th century. While it is now too late to study Eta Carinae’s historic eruption, astronomers have been observing HD 5980 with X-ray telescopes to study the hot gas.”
“Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have conducted the first spectroscopic survey of the Earth-sized planets (d, e, f, and g) within the habitable zone around the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. This study is a follow-up to Hubble observations made in May 2016 of the atmospheres of the inner TRAPPIST-1 planets b and c. Hubble reveals that at least three of the exoplanets (d, e, and f) do not seem to contain puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres similar to gaseous planets such as Neptune.
Additional observations are needed to determine the hydrogen content of the fourth planet’s (g) atmosphere. Hydrogen is a greenhouse gas, which smothers a planet orbiting close to its star, making it hot and inhospitable to life. The results, instead, favor more compact atmospheres like those of Earth, Venus, and Mars.
By not detecting the presence of a large abundance of hydrogen in the planets’ atmospheres, Hubble is helping to pave the way for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2019. Webb will probe deeper into the planetary atmospheres, searching for heavier gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, water, and oxygen. The presence of such elements could offer hints of whether life could be present, or if the planet were habitable.
“Hubble is doing the preliminary reconnaissance work so that astronomers using Webb know where to start,” said Nikole Lewis of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, co-leader of the Hubble study. “Eliminating one possible scenario for the makeup of these atmospheres allows the Webb telescope astronomers to plan their observation programs to look for other possible scenarios for the composition of these atmospheres.”
The planets orbit a red dwarf star that is much smaller and cooler than our Sun. The four alien worlds are members of a seven-planet system around TRAPPIST-1. All seven of the planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our Sun. Despite the planets’ close proximity to TRAPPIST-1, the star is so much cooler than our Sun that liquid water could exist on the planets’ surfaces.”
“The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is the next step in the search for planets outside of our solar system, including those that could support life. The mission will find exoplanets that periodically block part of the light from their host stars, events called transits. TESS will survey 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun to search for transiting exoplanets. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2018.”
Music credit: “Prototype” and “Trial” both from Killer Tracks
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