Author Topic: NASA - Kepler updates  (Read 275100 times)

Offline hop

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #460 on: 04/22/2016 05:28 pm »
Microlensing campaign is go!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-and-returned-to-the-k2-mission
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April 22, 2016
Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered and Returned to the K2 Mission
The Kepler spacecraft has been recovered and, as of 8:30 a.m. PDT today, it is back on the job as the K2 mission searching for exoplanets—planets beyond our solar system.

Offline redliox

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #461 on: 04/22/2016 07:02 pm »
Now that Kepler is running again, do we have any idea how long it could keep running based upon its fuel supply?  Of course another gyroscope could fail, but most of the time it's fuel that determines the longevity of orbiting spacecraft.
"Let the trails lead where they may, I will follow."
-Tigatron

Online jebbo

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #462 on: 05/04/2016 07:10 pm »
Not sure if this is really worthy of an update, but from today's Reddit:

"CS/NASA: That's everyone's burning question, and I bet you're as frustrated as everyone to hear "We're still working on it."
But I think the answer is that we lost about 2 campaigns worth of fuel to this anomaly. It's harder to say how many campaigns we'll end up with, because we continue to squeeze more efficiency out of the fuel. But my best estimate is that we'll still get 17 campaigns, lasting into mid summer, 2018. Call me in 2 years and we'll see how close I was."

--- Tony

Offline denis

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #463 on: 05/06/2016 10:09 pm »
Now that Kepler is running again, do we have any idea how long it could keep running based upon its fuel supply?  Of course another gyroscope could fail, but most of the time it's fuel that determines the longevity of orbiting spacecraft.

You mean another reaction wheel, right? I didn't know there was a gyro failure.



Online jebbo

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #464 on: 05/07/2016 06:15 am »
Now that Kepler is running again, do we have any idea how long it could keep running based upon its fuel supply?  Of course another gyroscope could fail, but most of the time it's fuel that determines the longevity of orbiting spacecraft.

I got this answer on their reddit AMA a few days ago:

> But I think the answer is that we lost about 2 campaigns worth of fuel to this anomaly. It's harder to say how many campaigns we'll end up with, because we continue to squeeze more efficiency out of the fuel. But my best estimate is that we'll still get 17 campaigns, lasting into mid summer, 2018. Call me in 2 years and we'll see how close I was.

--- Tony

Offline Alpha_Centauri

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #465 on: 05/08/2016 10:15 am »
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-latest-kepler-discoveries-during-media-teleconference

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NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, May 10 to announce the latest discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #466 on: 05/08/2016 01:37 pm »
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-announce-latest-kepler-discoveries-during-media-teleconference

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NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, May 10 to announce the latest discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

Can't tell much from the list of participants.

Offline Bubbinski

Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #467 on: 05/08/2016 07:28 pm »
I believe the last time they did a teleconference they announced planets in the habitable zone that were earth-sized. Perhaps something along those lines again? 

But I'm wondering if this is about more results crunched from the original Kepler prime mission or the more recent K2.  The original mission stared at the same field of stars for years on end and the K2 is observing different sets of stars in a shorter period of time, if they found a new earth-like planet I would think it would be around a red dwarf since those would have a short orbital period and it would not take too long to get three transits for confirmation.  But I'll be tuned in on Tuesday!
I'll even excitedly look forward to "flags and footprints" and suborbital missions. Just fly...somewhere.

Offline Alpha_Centauri

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #468 on: 05/08/2016 08:28 pm »
Based on the odd one out (Tim Morton) I would guess it to be related to planetary statistics rather than an individual planet discovery.
« Last Edit: 05/08/2016 08:48 pm by Alpha_Centauri »

Offline TheFallen

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #469 on: 05/10/2016 05:15 pm »
« Last Edit: 05/10/2016 05:24 pm by TheFallen »

Offline Bubbinski

Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #470 on: 05/10/2016 05:43 pm »
And 9 of those planets are in the habitable zone. Kepler 1229b is in the middle of the hab zone and earth-sized.
I'll even excitedly look forward to "flags and footprints" and suborbital missions. Just fly...somewhere.

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #471 on: 05/10/2016 05:49 pm »

Offline karlo

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #472 on: 05/11/2016 11:30 pm »
Hi.  Is there a forum for a related matter, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?

Offline Sam Ho

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #473 on: 05/11/2016 11:46 pm »
There was a really detailed Q&A with Mission manager Charlie Sobeck about the spacecraft emergency and recovery.  (This was preparatory to the Reddit AMA that happened last week.)

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager-qa-recovering-the-kepler-spacecraft-to-hunt-for-exoplanets-again

Also, the slides from the press conference are posted:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510


« Last Edit: 05/11/2016 11:48 pm by Sam Ho »

Offline Sam Ho

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #474 on: 05/11/2016 11:47 pm »

Offline Sam Ho

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #475 on: 05/11/2016 11:51 pm »
SpaceNews has an article about Sobeck's comments in the press conference on the spacecraft emergency as well.

http://spacenews.com/no-long-term-effects-from-kepler-spacecraft-anomaly/

Offline jacqmans

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #476 on: 05/12/2016 01:17 am »
May 10, 2016
RELEASE 16-051

NASA's Kepler Mission Announces Largest Collection of Planets Ever Discovered

NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date.

“This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth.”

Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.

"Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars,” said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. "This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe."

Kepler captures the discrete signals of distant planets – decreases in brightness that occur when planets pass in front of, or transit, their stars – much like the May 9 Mercury transit of our sun. Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system more than two decades ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, one-by-one process of verifying suspected planets.

This latest announcement, however, is based on a statistical analysis method that can be applied to many planet candidates simultaneously. Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey and lead author of the scientific paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, employed a technique to assign each Kepler candidate a planet-hood probability percentage – the first such automated computation on this scale, as previous statistical techniques focused only on sub-groups within the greater list of planet candidates identified by Kepler.

"Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs,” said Morton. “If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you're going to need a broom. This statistical analysis is our broom."

In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.

"They say not to count our chickens before they're hatched, but that's exactly what these results allow us to do based on probabilities that each egg (candidate) will hatch into a chick (bona fide planet)," said Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets -- a number that's needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds.”

Of the nearly 5,000 total planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler. Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. For four years, Kepler monitored 150,000 stars in a single patch of sky, measuring the tiny, telltale dip in the brightness of a star that can be produced by a transiting planet. In 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will use the same method to monitor 200,000 bright nearby stars and search for planets, focusing on Earth and Super-Earth-sized.

Ames manages the Kepler missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system, with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

For briefing materials from Tuesday’s media teleconference where the new group of planets was announced, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510
Jacques :-)

Offline PahTo

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #477 on: 05/12/2016 02:02 am »

Fantastic set of posts--a "Like" just doesn't convey my appreciation.  Thanks!

Offline scienceguy

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #478 on: 05/12/2016 04:09 am »
In Sam Ho's diagram of planet size, it showed that there are lots of super-earths, or planets with radii from 1.2 to 1.9 times that of Earth. If these planets have masses ranging from 1.44 to 3.61 times that of Earth, then they will have Earth-like gravity on their surfaces too! And I would guess that there are many planets in that range.
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA - Kepler updates
« Reply #479 on: 05/12/2016 08:37 am »
2007 OR10: the largest unnamed world in the solar system

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Recently, a group of astronomers did just that by combining data from two space observatories to reveal something surprising: a dwarf planet named 2007 OR10 is significantly larger than previously thought.

The results peg 2007 OR10 as the largest unnamed world in our solar system and the third largest of the current roster of about half a dozen dwarf planets. The study also found that the object is quite dark and rotating more slowly than almost any other body orbiting our Sun, taking close to 45 hours to complete its daily spin.

For their research, the scientists used NASA’s repurposed planet-hunting Kepler space telescope — its mission now known as K2 — along with the archival data from the infrared Herschel Space Observatory. Herschel was a mission of the European Space Agency with NASA participation. The research paper reporting these results is published in The Astronomical Journal.

“K2 has made yet another important contribution in revising the size estimate of 2007 OR10. But what’s really powerful is how combining K2 and Herschel data yields such a wealth of information about the object’s physical properties,” said Geert Barentsen, Kepler/K2 research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

The revised measurement of the planet’s diameter, 955 miles (1,535 kilometres), is about 60 miles (100 kilometres) greater than the next largest dwarf planet, Makemake, or about one-third smaller than Pluto. Another dwarf planet, named Haumea, has an oblong shape that is wider on its long axis than 2007 OR10, but its overall volume is smaller.

https://astronomynow.com/2016/05/12/2007-or10-the-largest-unnamed-world-in-the-solar-system/

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