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NASA News
The latest updates from deep space missions, planetary defense, and scientific breakthroughs across the cosmos.
ExoplanetsNASA’s Next Planet Hunter Will Look Closer to Home
As the search for life on distant planets heats up, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is bringing this hunt closer to home. Launching in 2017-2018, TESS will identify planets orbiting the brightest stars just outside our solar system using what’s known as the transit method. When a planet passes in front of, or transits, …
ExoplanetsSmaller Stars Pack Big X-ray Punch for Would-Be Planets
Young stars much less massive than the Sun can unleash a torrent of X-ray radiation that can significantly shorten the lifetime of planet-forming disks surrounding these stars. This result comes from a new study of a group of nearby stars using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. Researchers found evidence that intense …
ExoplanetsInnovative Planet-Finding Technology Passes Another Hurdle
VNC Now Sensitive to Broader Spectral Range A potentially revolutionary instrument now being developed to first find Earth-like planets in other solar systems and then study their atmospheres to identify chemical signatures of life has just passed another technological hurdle that makes it an even stronger contender for a future astrophysics mission. The instrument, called …
ExoplanetsPICTURE-B: Seeing Through the Glare
Update – Nov. 25, 2015: NASA successfully launched the PICTURE-B payload on a Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket at 11:17 p.m. EST (9:17 p.m. MST), Nov. 24, from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The team is examining the science and engineering data to determine the payload’s performance. The payload flew to …
ExoplanetsFinding New Worlds with a Play of Light and Shadow
Astronomers have used many different methods to discover planets beyond the solar system, but the most successful by far is transit photometry, which measures changes in a star’s brightness caused by a mini-eclipse. When a planet crosses in front of its star along our line of sight, it blocks some of the star’s light. If …
ExoplanetsWFIRST-AFTA: Groundbreaking Space Observatory to Image Exoplanets and Tackle a Universe of Questions
We all want the ability to peer into the future. And that’s exactly the focus of NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) – a mission concept to answer vital questions in both exoplanet detection and dark energy research. The powerful role that spaceborne telescopes can play in the future was underscored by a seminal study …
ExoplanetsNew NASA Supercomputer Model Shows Planet Making Waves in Nearby Debris Disk
A new NASA supercomputer simulation of the planet and debris disk around the nearby star Beta Pictoris reveals that the planet’s motion drives spiral waves throughout the disk, a phenomenon that causes collisions among the orbiting debris. Patterns in the collisions and the resulting dust appear to account for many observed features that previous research …
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