One Day On Earth From Space … Amazing isn’t it?
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Space Station Vista: Planet and Galaxy
If you could circle the Earth aboard the International Space Station, what might you see? Some amazing vistas, one of which was captured in this breathtaking picture in mid-2015. First, visible at the top, are parts of the space station itself including solar panels. Just below the station is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, glowing with the combined light of billions of stars, but dimmed in patches by filaments of dark dust. The band of red light just below the Milky Way is airglow – Earth’s atmosphere excited by the Sun and glowing in specific colors of light. Green airglow is visible below the red. Of course that’s our Earth below its air, with the terminator between day and night visible near the horizon. As clouds speckle the planet, illumination from a bright lightning bolt is seen toward the lower right. Between work assignments, astronauts from all over the Earth have been enjoying vistas like this from the space station since the year 2000.
Kepler Space Telescope May Be Gone For Good
Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has found thousands of planets outside our solar system. One of NASA’s least known but most remarkable—and important—missions, it has quietly changed our understanding of our place in the cosmos, providing hard information about the chances of life in the far reaches of space.
But its planet-hunting days may be done.
“On Friday October 19, during a regularly scheduled spacecraft contact using NASA’s Deep Space Network, the team learned that the spacecraft had transitioned to its no-fuel-use sleep mode,” the Kepler team said in an update yesterday. “The Kepler team is currently assessing the cause and evaluating possible next steps."
NASA knew the spacecraft was low on fuel, making it only a matter of time before the supply was exhausted. The space agency had already put the craft into no-fuel-use sleep mode once this month. But there was another mode change, which wasn’t initiated by NASA—meaning the craft may have done it automatically. (An October 12 report also indicated that Kepler was having trouble stabilizing, though NASA was able to get it stable enough to download data from its last observing campaign.)
The Kepler Space Telescope began as a four-year planned mission to monitor the same patch of sky near the Cygnus constellation for transiting planets. "Transiting” refers to a planet crossing between its star and Earth, causing dips in light, which are detected by photometers. The changes in light are minute, but they’re enough to determine the approximate size of a planet.
In 2013, Kepler broke a third reaction wheel, a part that it uses to keep the instruments stable, seemingly imperiling the mission. Using pressure from sunlight along with strategic fuel use, engineers were able to prolong the lifetime of Kepler. They started looking for larger planets and called this mission K2. The telescope has found more than 300 new planets during its second run.
The original Kepler mission found 2,327 planets, while K2 found 325. An additional 2,244 Kepler and 493 K2 planet candidates await confirmation that they are indeed new worlds, a process that typically involves using ground-based observatories to look for the candidates in question.
Even if Kepler wakes up this time, it appears that the end is near. But not before it told us about more than 5,000 planets and potential planets that we never knew existed.
That, space fans, is a legacy.
The Spiral Galaxy M100
Picture Credit: NASA, Hubble Space Telescope
The Earth from Apollo 17
Picture Credit: NASA, Apollo 17, NSSDC
The International Space Station Over Earth
Credit: STS-128 Crew, NASA
One Day On Earth From Space
Space Debris Around Earth
NASA’s Chandra Space Telescope Finds Star Trek Enterprise
A galaxy cluster collision in Abell 1033 makes for a rare moment that appears to look very much like the Star Trek Enterprise NCC-1701A.
Earth Space Debris From A Polar Orbit