OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dicit:

An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917, but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. This was followed by the confirmation of a different planet, originally detected in 1988. As of 1 April 2021, there are 4,704 confirmed exoplanets in 3,478 systems, with 770 systems having more than one planet.

There are many methods of detecting exoplanets. Transit photometry and Doppler spectroscopy have found the most, but these methods suffer from a clear observational bias favoring the detection of planets near the star; thus, 85% of the exoplanets detected are inside the tidal locking zone. In several cases, multiple planets have been observed around a star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an “Earth-sized” planet in the habitable zone. Assuming there are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, it can be hypothesized that there are 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way, rising to 40 billion if planets orbiting the numerous red dwarfs are included.

The least massive planet known is Draugr (also known as PSR B1257+12 A or PSR B1257+12 b), which is about twice the mass of the Moon. The most massive planet listed on the NASA Exoplanet Archive is HR 2562 b, about 30 times the mass of Jupiter, although according to some definitions of a planet (based on the nuclear fusion of deuterium), it is too massive to be a planet and may be a brown dwarf instead. Known orbital times for exoplanets vary from a few hours (for those closest to their star) to thousands of years. Some exoplanets are so far away from the star that it is difficult to tell whether they are gravitationally bound to it. Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way. There is evidence that extragalactic planets, exoplanets farther away in galaxies beyond the local Milky Way galaxy, may exist. The nearest exoplanets are located 4.2 light-years (1.3 parsecs) from Earth and orbit Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.

Video credit: NASA

SpaceX dicit:

On March 3, Starship serial number 10 (SN10) completed SpaceX’s third high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype as it successfully ascended, transitioned propellant, and reoriented itself for reentry and an active aerodynamic controlled descent. SN10’s Raptor engines reignited to perform the vehicle’s landing flip maneuver immediately before successfully touching down on the landing pad.

Test flights such as SN10’s are about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.

Video credit: SpaceX

NASA dicit:

Expedition 64 Commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos took a short ride away from the International Space Station March 19, undocking their Russian Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing port of the station’s Russian segment and redocking to the Poisk module on the station’s space-facing side.

The relocation maneuver cleared the Rassvet port for the April 9 arrival of three additional crew members, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, who will dock their Soyuz MS-18 vehicle after their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Video credit: NASA

Wikipedia dicit:

Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 5 August 2011 UTC, as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on 5 July 2016 UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. After completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Juno’s mission is to measure Jupiter’s composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds up to 620 km/h (390 mph).

Juno is the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after the nuclear powered Galileo orbiter, which orbited from 1995 to 2003. Unlike all earlier spacecraft sent to the outer planets, Juno is powered by solar arrays, commonly used by satellites orbiting Earth and working in the inner Solar System, whereas radioisotope thermoelectric generators are commonly used for missions to the outer Solar System and beyond. For Juno, however, the three largest solar array wings ever deployed on a planetary probe play an integral role in stabilizing the spacecraft as well as generating power.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS/ULiège/Bonfond

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter has made an unexpected discovery about a different planet – Mars. Juno scientists discovered that Martian dust may be the source of a sky phenomenon known as the zodiacal light.

Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That glow is the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun.

Astronomers have long thought that the dust is brought into the inner solar system by asteroids and comets. But now, a team of Juno scientists argues that the planet Mars may be the source. The discovery resulted from dust particles slamming into the Juno spacecraft during its journey from Earth to Jupiter. Juno’s expansive solar panels unintentionally became the biggest and most sensitive dust detector ever built. Impacts on the solar panels provided important clues to the origin and orbital evolution of the dust, resolving some of the mysterious variations observed in the zodiacal light.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher (USRA): Lead Producer/Michael Lentz (USRA): Lead Animator/Kel Elkins (USRA):Lead Data Visualizer/Lonnie Shekhtman (ADNET): Writer/Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC): Public Affairs Officer/John Connerney (NASA/GSFC): Scientist/David Agle (JPL): Support/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/Original musical score by Vangelis, used with permission.

NASA dicit:

NASA’s newest rover captured this rover descent camera POV footage of its February 18 touchdown on Mars.

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory