Have we already found Earth 2.0?

Have we already found Earth 2.0? 

Within 20 years, NASA expects to confirm ‘we are not alone’ and find the first traces of alien life

Exoplanets: Searching for Earth 2.0 6:44

Astronomer Dr Alan Duffy is on the search for exoplanets in our distant universe and explains how we'll find extraterrestrial life.


100 MILLION worlds may hold alien life in our galaxy. Now NASA has detailed exactly how it expects to find the first inhabited planet other than our own within our lifetimes.
“Just imagine the moment, when we find potential signatures of life. Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realises that its long loneliness in time and space may be over — the possibility we’re no longer alone in the universe,” Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said this morning.
That moment, he believes, is likely to be within the next 20 years.

Exoplanets
A meeting was held at NASA’s Washington headquarters this morning to detail international efforts aimed at finding life out there.
The presentation detailed NASA’s road map for the search for life in the universe, involving a series of current and future telescopes.
“Sometime in the near future, people will be able to point to a star and say, ‘that star has a planet like Earth’,” Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told the gathering of NASA and affiliated planet hunters.

Planet hunters ... John Grunsfeld, John Mather, Sara Seager, Dave Gallagher and Matt Moun
Planet hunters ... John Grunsfeld, John Mather, Sara Seager, Dave Gallagher and Matt Mountain discuss "the scientific and technological road map that will lead to the discovery of potentially habitable worlds among the stars". Source: AFP
The meeting comes after a group of international astronomers and astrobiologists published new research assessing the possibility of complex life on other worlds.
Their estimate — described as conservative — calculates 100 million worlds in our own galaxy are able to sustain complex alien life. That’s from among the 17 billion Earth-sized worlds believed to be spinning around the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars.
“I think in the next 20 years we will find out if we are not alone in the universe,” NASA Astronomer Kevin Hand said yesterday.
The planet hunt has been picking up pace in recent years. What started as ground-based radio observatories and telescopes has already moved to space-based facilities such as the Hubble, Kepler and Spitzer telescopes.
What they can tell is limited, but revealing: They can determine if a planet is the right distance from a start to hold liquid water.
This is the “Goldilocks Zone”, where conditions are “not to cold, not too hot — just right” for life as we
know it.

Not too hot, not too cold — just right ... This NASA artist's conception llustrates Keple
Not too hot, not too cold — just right ... This NASA artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Source: AFP
So far, the few “best contenders” for life are believed to have conditions little better than that found on Jupiter’s moon, Europa
But NASA has now detailed a new generation of telescopes being built on the ground and being sent into orbit in the search for “Earth 2.0”.
Much of its hopes for finding evidence of life is being placed in the Transiting Exoplanet Surveying Satellite (TESS), due to be launched in 2017, the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018 and two further as-yet-unfunded projects scheduled for the next decade.
New space telescope to answer the big question, Are we alone?” 1:50



The James Webb space telescope is being sent almost a million miles away, tasked with answering the question: 'Are we alone?'
These telescopes will not only find and position a planet, they are hoped to provide clues as to their atmospheric make-up and greatly refine what we have already inferred.
In particular, they’ll be looking for water. But they’ll also be looking for other signs.
“Chemicals in our atmosphere like methane and oxygen would quickly combine meaning
something has to be replenishing them, so if we find these in another world’s atmosphere
we have a clue that something is creating it,” Australian astronomer Dr Alan Duffy, Research Fellow at the Swinburne University of Technology, said this morning. “This might not be life but it’s a first clue.”
Eye on space ... An artist's concept depicts NASA's Kepler mission's smallest habitable z
Eye on space ... An artist's concept depicts NASA's Kepler mission's smallest habitable zone planet. Seen in the foreground is Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Source: AFP
The success of the planet-hunting program has produced phenomenal results in recent years.
Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler telescope shook up the astronomy community with its discovery of more than 5000 potential exoplanets, of which more than 1700 have been confirmed.
“This technology we are using to explore exoplanets is real,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The James Webb Space Telescope and the next advances are happening now. These are not dreams — this is what we do at NASA.”
This decade has seen the discovery of more and more super Earths, which are rocky planets that are larger and heftier than Earth. Finding smaller planets, the Earth twins, is a tougher challenge
Kepler was the first to pinpoint planets known to be within the “Goldilocks Zone”, and indicates most worlds at that range are generally less than three-times the size of Earth.
“What we didn’t know five years ago is that perhaps 10 to 20 per cent of stars around us have Earth-size planets in the habitable zone,” says Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “It’s within our grasp to pull off a discovery that will change the world forever.”

NASA’s ‘flying saucer’ a success

Watch the video above: NASA launches “flying saucer” to test in technology in youtube

LOS ANGELES – NASA has tested new technology designed to bring spacecraft — and one day even astronauts — safely down to Mars, with the agency declaring the experiment a qualified success even though a giant parachute got tangled on the way down.

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Saturday’s $150 million experiment is the first of three involving the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator vehicle. Tests are being conducted at high altitude on Earth to mimic descent through the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.

A balloon hauled the saucer-shaped craft 36,576 metres into the sky from a Navy missile range on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Then, the craft’s own rocket boosted it to more than 30 miles high at supersonic speeds.

As the craft prepared to fall back to earth, a doughnut-shaped tube around it expanded like a Hawaiian puffer fish, creating atmospheric drag to dramatically slow it down from Mach 4, or four times the speed of sound.

Then the parachute unfurled — but only partially. The vehicle made a hard landing in the Pacific Ocean.

Engineers won’t look at the parachute problem as a failure but as a way to learn more and apply that knowledge during future tests, said NASA engineer Dan Coatta with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“In a way, that’s a more valuable experience for us than if everything had gone exactly according to plan,” he said.

A ship was sent to recover a “black box” designed to separate from the vehicle and float. Outfitted with a GPS beacon, the box contains the crucial flight data that scientists are eager to analyze.

NASA investigators expect to know more once they have analyzed data from the box, which they expect to retrieve Sunday along with the vehicle and parachute. They also expect to recover high resolution video.

“We’ve got a lot to look at,” Ian Clark, principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters on a teleconference.

Since the twin Viking spacecraft landed on the red planet in 1976, NASA has relied on a parachute to slow landers and rovers.

But the latest experiment involved both the drag-inducing device and a parachute that was 110 feet in diameter — twice as large as the one that carried the 1-ton Curiosity rover in 2011.

Cutting-edge technologies are needed to safely land larger payloads on Mars, enabling delivery of supplies and materials “and to pave the way for future human explorers,” a NASA statement said.

Technology development “is the surest path to Mars,” said Michael Gazarik, head of space technology at NASA headquarters.

Experiments of Indian student from UAE to be fired into space.

Dubai: An 11-year-old Indian student is the lone participant from the UAE who has got her two experiments approved for launch into space under a programme for budding young scientists.

Two experiments of Prerna Pai, a seventh grader at Sharjah's Delhi Private School (DPS), are among the 100 selected experiments that will be fired into space under the Cubes In Space Programme on June 26, Gulf News reported.

The Cubes in Space (CIS) Programme was launched in May and had invited students from around the world in the age group of 11-14 to devise experimental payloads for space.

      The Cubes in Space (CIS) Programme was launched in May and had invited                 students from around the world in the age group of 11-14.

"I had to think a lot when I learnt about this contest and sent them (CIS) many proposals. My science teacher has always encouraged me to think out of the box and that inspired me."

"Once my ideas were selected, CIS sent me a kit into which I had to place my experiments and mail it to them. I was so thrilled by the news that I even dashed off a thank-you note to CIS," Gulf News quoted Pai as saying.

She submitted two experiments that she called "To stick or not to stick" and "time and pressure".

The first experiment is about studying the manner in which different adhesives are likely to behave in space in the absence of atmospheric pressure.

For this, Pai used a thermocol cube of 12 pieces in which each corner was stuck using a different kind of adhesive such as modelling clay, wax, cello tape, metal wire, thread, school glue and super glue.

The second involves two tiny bottles - one made of plastic and the other of glass - sealed with a modelling clay cork and placed in a cube. The experiment will focus on how the bottles react to lack of atmospheric pressure: Will they disintegrate, get damaged or remain intact?

Once the experiments are back from space and mailed to her, Pai intends to begin research on the effects, film the results and mail them back to CIS.

NASA Probe Flew by Huge Saturn Moon Titan :

NASA's Cassini spacecraft i  flys  by Saturn's moon Titan  to learn more about the huge satellite's thick atmosphere and frigid, sea-studded surface.

During today's encounter — the 103rd Titan flyby for Cassini over its long operational life — the probe will skim just 2,274 miles (3,660 kilometers) above the moon at a speed of 13,000 mph (20,920 km/h), NASA officials said.

Cassini will bounce radio signals off the big Saturn moon toward Earth, where they'll be picked up by the antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network. Scientists will then pore over the signals for clues about Titan's surface, which harbors several large liquid-hydrocarbon seas.

LISTEN AS OPTIMUS PRIME DESCRIBES THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE’S SUCCESSOR:

Optimus Prime is voiced by Peter Cullen, and he wants to teach you all about The James Webb Space Telescope. It’s The Hubble Space Telescope’s replacement–larger and more powerful than Hubble–scheduled to launch in 2018!

Nasa isn't only concerned with space and earth,aeronautics is the huge part of the agencies mission too.In fact in word  NASA the first A stands for aeronautics.So know what is nasa's vision in aeronautics in the 21st century. Join the live conversation here.http://bit.ly/1ow4Cgn

Lunar sample in vacuum. A lunar sample in a ultra-high vacuum system is hit with ultraviolet (157 nm) photons to simulate conditions in space.


water is thought to be embedded in the moons  rocks or, if cold enough, "stuck" on their surfaces. It's predominantly found at the poles But scientists probably won't find it intact on the sunlit side.

The Georgia Tech team built an ultra-high vacuum system that simulates conditions in space, then performed the first-ever reported measurement of the water photodesorption  cross section from an actual lunar sample. The machine zapped a small piece of the moon with ultraviolet (157 nm) photons to create excited states and watched what happened to the water molecules. They either came off with a cross section of ~ 6 x 10⁻¹⁹ cm² or broke apart with a cross section of ~ 5 x 10⁻¹⁹ cm^2.. According to the team's measurements, approximately one in every 1,000 molecules leave the lunar surface simply due to absorption of UV light.

Georgia Tech's cross section values can now be used by scientists attempting to find water throughout the solar  system and beyond.

"The cross section is an important number planetary scientists, astrochemists and the astrophysics community need for models regarding the fate of water on comets, moons, asteroids, other airless bodies and interstellar grains," said Thomas Orlando, the Georgia Tech professor who led the study.

The number is relatively large, which establishes that solar UV photons are likely removing water from the moon's surface. This research, which was carried out primarily by former Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Alice DeSimone, indicates the cross sections increase even more with decreasing water coverage. That's why it's not likely that water remains intact as H₂O on the sunny side of the moon. Orlando compares it to sitting outside on a summer day.

"If a lot of sunlight is hitting me, the probability of me getting sunburned is pretty high," said Orlando, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Physics. "It's similar on the moon. There's a fixed solar flux of energetic photons that hit the sunlit surface, and there's a pretty good probability they remove water or damage the molecules."

The result, according to Orlando, is the release of molecules such as H₂O, H₂ and OH as well as the atomic fragments H and O. The research is published in two companion articles in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. The first discusses the water photodesorption. The second paper details the photodissociation of water and the O(³P_J) formation on a lunar impact melt breccia.

Orlando is the associate director of Georgia Tech's Center for Space Technology and Research (C-STAR). C-STAR is an interdisciplinary research center that serves to organize, integrate and facilitate the impact of Georgia Tech's space science and space technology research activities. The center brings together a wide range of Georgia Tech faculty, active in space science and space technology research, and functions as the Institute's focal point for growth of the space industry in the state of Georgia.