United Launch Alliance\’s Delta II launch vehicle, carrying Kepler, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday, March 6, 2009, at 10:49 PM EST.
Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding terrestrial exo-planets. Of particular interest are the planets orbiting in the so-called habitable zone, where conditions are met so that liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet.
Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding terrestrial exo-planets. Of particular interest are the planets orbiting in the so-called habitable zone, where conditions are met so that liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet.
The Kepler mission, part of NASA’s Discovery Program, is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way. Kepler will survey a large number of stars, and explore the structure and diversity of many planetary systems.
The Mars500 experiment is a cooperative project between the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP). The experiment will be conducted inside a special facility at the IBMP in Moscow.
Mars500 is essential for the preparation of human missions to Mars, as the data, knowledge, and experience accumulated during the experiment will help scientists investigate the human factors of this type of mission.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). While Hubble looks at the sky in the visible and ultraviolet light, JWST will operate in the infrared. JWST is a joint mission of NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency.
The project started in 1996 and was initially known as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). In 2002, the project was renamed the James Webb Space Telescope in honor of NASA administrator James E. Webb, who led the agency from February 1961 to October 1968.
The scientific objective of the Dawn mission is to answer important questions about the origin and the evolution of our solar system. The currently accepted theory about the formation of our solar system states that Jupiter’s gravity interfered with the accretion process, thereby preventing a planet from forming in the region between Jupiter and Mars. This led to the formation of the asteroid belt.
The asteroids chosen as scientific targets are Vesta and Ceres. Due to their size, they have survived the collisional phase, and it is believed that they have preserved the physical and chemical conditions of the early solar system. The asteroids have followed different evolutionary paths and have dissimilar characteristics, which makes them perfect research subjects.
Copyright: CNES
COROT, the first space telescope able to detect rocky planets around nearby stars, was launched in December 2006. COROT is a French-led mission with ESA contributions.
COROT uses its 30-centimeter telescope to monitor the brightness of stars. The changes in the brightness of a star reveal transiting planets. COROT is also able to detect starquakes, which are acoustical waves generated deep inside stars. The brightness of a star can be altered by ripples caused by starquakes, and this provides data that allows astronomers to determine the mass, age, and the chemical composition of a star.
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