Current+Events

=**NASA ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR HUMAN EXPLORATION OF DEEP SPACE, FOSTERS COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT AND MAKES MAJOR DISCOVERIES IN 2011**=

WASHINGTON -- In 2011, NASA began developing a heavy-lift rocket for the human exploration of deep space, helped foster a new era of commercial spaceflight and technology breakthroughs, fully utilized a newly complete space station, and made major discoveries about the universe we live in, many of which will benefit life on Earth. "The year truly marks the beginning of a new era in the human exploration of our solar system," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Just as important are the ground-breaking discoveries about Earth and the universe, as well as our work to inspire and educate a new generation of scientists and engineers, and our efforts to keep the agency on a firm financial footing with its first clean audit in nine years. It's been a landmark year for the entire NASA team."

= = = = = NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Three Smallest Exoplanets = = 01.11.12 =

//Click image for multiple resolutions and full caption.// **Mini Planetary System**: This artist's conception illustrates KOI-961. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

//Click image for multiple resolutions and full caption.// **Sizing Up Exoplanets**: This chart compares artists' concepts of the smallest known exoplanets, or planets orbiting outside the solar system, to our own planets Mars and Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

//Click image for multiple resolutions and full caption.// **'Honey I Shrunk the Planetary System'**: This artist's concept compares the KOI-961 planetary system to Jupiter and the largest four of its many moons. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. The smallest is about the size of Mars.

All three planets are thought to be rocky like Earth, but orbit close to their star. That makes them too hot to be in the habitable zone, which is the region where liquid water could exist. Of the more than 700 planets confirmed to orbit other stars -- called exoplanets -- only a handful are known to be rocky.

"Astronomers are just beginning to confirm thousands of planet candidates uncovered by Kepler so far," said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington." Finding one as small as Mars is amazing, and hints that there may be a bounty of rocky planets all around us."

Kepler searches for planets by continuously monitoring more than 150,000 stars, looking for telltale dips in their brightness caused by crossing, or transiting, planets. At least three transits are required to verify a signal as a planet. Follow-up observations from ground-based telescopes also are needed to confirm the discoveries.

The latest discovery comes from a team led by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The team used data publicly released by the Kepler mission, along with follow-up observations from the Palomar Observatory, near San Diego, and the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Their measurements dramatically revised the sizes of the planets from what originally was estimated.

The three planets are very close to their star, taking less than two days to orbit around it. The KOI-961 star is a red dwarf with a diameter one-sixth that of our sun, making it just 70 percent bigger than Jupiter.

"This is the tiniest solar system found so far," said John Johnson, the principal investigator of the research from NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It's actually more similar to Jupiter and its moons in scale than any other planetary system. The discovery is further proof of the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy."

Red dwarfs are the most common kind of star in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery of three rocky planets around one red dwarf suggests that the galaxy could be teeming with similar rocky planets.

"These types of systems could be ubiquitous in the universe," said Phil Muirhead, lead author of the new study from Caltech. "This is a really exciting time for planet hunters."

The discovery follows a string of recent milestones for the Kepler mission. In December 2011, scientists announced the mission's first confirmed planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star: a planet 2.4 times the size of Earth called Kepler-22b. Later in the month, the team announced the discovery of the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f.

For the latest discovery, the team obtained the sizes of the three planets called KOI-961.01, KOI-961.02 and KOI-961.03 with the help of a well-studied twin star to KOI-961, or Barnard's Star. By better understanding the KOI-961 star, they then could determine how big the planets must be to have caused the observed dips in starlight. In addition to the Kepler observations and ground-based telescope measurements, the team used modeling techniques to confirm the planet discoveries.

Prior to these confirmed planets, only six other planets had been confirmed using the Kepler public data.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission's development.

= Study Shows Our Galaxy Has at Least 100 Billion Planets = = = Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets, according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three planets located outside our solar system, called exoplanets. The discovery, to be reported in the January 12 issue of Nature, was made by an international team of astronomers, including co-author Stephen Kane of NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. The survey results show that our galaxy contains, on average, a minimum of one planet for every star. This means that it's likely there is a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth. The study is based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, using a technique called microlensing to survey the galaxy for planets. In this technique, one star acts like a magnifying lens to brighten the light from a background star. If planets are orbiting the foreground star, the background star's light will further brighten, revealing the presence of a planet that is otherwise too faint to be seen. The study also concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy. "Results from the three main techniques of planet detection, including microlensing, are rapidly converging to a common result: Not only are planets common in the galaxy, but there are more small planets than large ones," said Stephen Kane, a co-author from NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. "This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets." Read the full story at []. NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech is the science operations and analysis center for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA. More information is at [|http://nexsci.caltech.edu] and [|http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov]. = =

=Hundreds of meteorites uncovered in Antarctica= By Leonard David Published January 24, 2012 A gang of heavily insulated scientists has wrapped up its Antarctic expedition, with its members thawing out from the experience, but pleased to have bagged more than 300 space rocks. They are participants in the [|Antarctic Search for Meteorites] program, or ANSMET for short. Since 1976, ANSMET researchers have been recovering thousands of meteorite specimens from the East Antarctic ice sheet. ANSMET is funded by the Office of Polar Programs of the [|National Science Foundation].According to the ANSMET website, the specimens are currently the only reliable, continuous source of new, nonmicroscopic extraterrestrial material. Given that there are no active planetary sample-return missions coming or going at the moment, the retrieval of meteorites is the cheapest and only guaranteed way to recover new things from worlds beyond the Earth. [[|Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space] ] **Special place** "It has been another interesting season at Miller Range," said Ralph Harvey, associate professor in the department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. "The place is special for us because we seem to [|find meteorites everywhere], in every little nook and cranny, almost unpredictable," Harvey told SPACE.com. "And it did it again ... lots of places we checked out just to be complete proved to have dozens of specimens." Harvey is the principal [|investigator] for the ANSMET program. "I've been leading field parties since 1991 and I think this year marks my 25th overall with the program," Harvey said. Harvey likens his search for meteorites to a farmer who's used to harvesting corn in a field finding it growing in the barn, in the garage, in the basement and other surprising spots. The meteorite hunting wasn't all smooth, though. The team was held back significantly by early snowfalls that buried the meteorites. Even though a few strong windstorms cleared some of it, the whipping winds did not clear all of it, Harvey explained. "The total number of meteorites is less than half what I would have predicted, again primarily because of that early snow hiding all the specimens," Harvey said. "We'll be going back to the Miller Range at least one more time and maybe two." **Celestial collectibles** [|Antarctica] is viewed as the world's premier meteorite hunting ground, and for good reason. While meteorites fall in a random fashion all over the globe, the East Antarctic ice sheet is a "desert of ice," a [|stark scene] that enhances the likelihood of finding meteorites, which are usually undisturbed and stand out against the background. In the just-concluded search, the team's bounty of celestial collectibles brought the total number of meteorites found in ANSMET history to 20,000. [[|Hunting for Space Rocks: Q&A with Geoff Notkin of 'Meteorite Men']] Along with Harvey, the meteorite hunters are: //John Schutt//, an ANSMET mountaineer for over 30 years who once again played that role. He recently got an honorary doctorate recognizing his contributions to [|planetary science]. //Jim Karner//, a postdoctoral researcher working with the ANSMET program and a specialist in Martian meteorites from Case Western Reserve. He's a veteran of four ANSMET expeditions. //Christian Schrader//, a geologist from [|NASA] Marshall [|Space Flight Center] in Huntsville, Ala., who has done significant rock work, particularly in studying lunar meteorites. //Katie Joy//, planetary geologist, most recently from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Tex., and a lunar meteorite researcher. //Anne Peslier//, a planetary scientist from NASA's [|Johnson Space Center] in Houston who has done a great [|deal] of work on Martian meteorites. //Jake Maule//, a planetary scientist, recently of Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., with a specialty in astrobiology. //Jesper Holst//, a Ph.D. student studying planetary geochemistry at the University of Copenhagen. //Tim Swindle,// a planetary geochemist from the University of Arizona, taking part in the second half of the season, and a veteran of several previous expeditions. **Samples and survival kits** The team members used Ski-Doo Snowmobiles to transport themselves out in the field. Each person is armed with a survival kit, meteorite gathering equipment, lots of water and food, medical kits, Iridium satellite phones and GPS devices. Once a sample is spotted, scientists assign it an identification number. They establish its position with GPS and note the specimen's size, possible classification and any distinguishing features such as shape or fusion crust. Researchers then collect the sample in a sterile Teflon bag, taking care to avoid contact with any mechanical or biological materials. While the field season was in progress, these samples were inventoried and kept frozen. Upon the team's return to McMurdo Station, the U.S. scientific headquarters in the Antarctic, the meteorites were transferred to special shipping containers and sent, still frozen, to the Antarctic Meteorite Curation Facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. There the meteorites are carefully removed from their sealed bags, dried to remove any attached snow or ice and stored under cleanroom conditions for future study. **Tent time** During their month-long stay, and at different camp sites, the group posted a series of dispatches from the field. Frequently, the noncooperating weather forced the team to spend lots of tent time: eating, reading, resting, writing. "But as always in Antarctica, everything depends on the weather," wrote an upbeat Peslier, "so who knows what tomorrow will bring!" Added another team member, "I am starting to wonder about the wisdom of having so many sugary snacks within hand's reach, literally, in our tent food box." "Life has been good so far in camp," wrote Joy. "There has been lots of great meals, endless hot chocolate drinking and, having dug out my box of sweet treats, I have uncovered my small stash of Kendal mint cake that I have been [|saving] for months for the trip. Yum." In another dispatch from the ice, Schrader reported: "It was a special day for us because we collected our first meteorites. Yee haw." At the start of exploring Miller Range, he said, "we collected 15 specimens...a modest but solid start." Snug in his tent, Maule explained: "The biggest hardship for me out here is missing my loved ones back home. Yet, all of us on the team are in the same boat and we're all pulling together for one another. This place is special and it is a real honor for us to be here." As the Christmas holiday season neared, Maule observed: "Best wishes to everyone as the holiday season nears. We actually have a poor, stunted Christmas tree in a bucket outside the poo tent. Very festive." In another posting. Holst wrote: "A few hours of systematic searching yielded another 14 meteorites, including carbonaceous chondrite shards...I think we all feel that we hit the jackpot today, and we are so happy that we moved camp. So now, the real hunt is on! Oh yeah!"

Read more: [|http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/24/hundreds-meteorites-uncovered-in-antarctica/?intcmp=features#ixzz1kOd4RLNr]