NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is seeking proposals for technologies that could be used on future exploration missions. The new proposals will build on the most promising ideas developed in the program’s first phase.
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Media are invited to attend a breakfast reception at 8:30 a.m. EDT April 23 to celebrate the 24th anniversary of Hubble Space Telescope’s launch into space with the opening of the “Repairing Hubble” exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, located at 600 Independence Ave. SW in Washington.
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Nearly 2.5 tons of NASA science investigations and cargo are on the way to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
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NASA will celebrate the 44th anniversary of Earth Day with a variety of live and online activities April 21-27 to engage the public in the agency’s mission to better understand and protect our home planet.
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Ground controllers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., have confirmed that NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft impacted the surface of the moon, as planned, between 9:30 and 10:22 p.m. PDT Thursday, April 17.
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The artist’s concept depicts Kepler-186f , the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone—a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet’s surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth.
The size of Kepler-186f is known to be less than ten percent larger than Earth, but its mass, composition and density are not known. Previous research suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky. Prior to this discovery, the “record holder” for the most “Earth-like” planet went to Kepler-62f, which is 40 percent larger than the size of Earth and orbits in its star’s habitable zone.
Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days and receives one-third the energy that Earth does from the sun, placing it near the outer edge of the habitable zone. If you could stand on the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon would appear as bright as our sun is about an hour before sunset on Earth.
Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four inner planets, seen lined up in orbit around a host star that is half the size and mass of the sun.
The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds.
> Read more about Kepler-186f
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The diagram compares the planets of our inner solar system to Kepler-186, a five-planet star system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The five planets of Kepler-186 orbit an M dwarf, a star that is is half the size and mass of the sun.
The Kepler-186 system is home to Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone—a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet’s surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step toward finding a world similar to Earth.
The size of Kepler-186f is known to be less ten percent larger than Earth, but its mass and composition are not known. Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days, receiving one-third the heat energy that Earth does from the sun. This places the planet near the outer edge of the habitable zone.
The inner four companion planets each measure less than fifty percent the size of Earth. Kepler-186b, Kepler-186c, Kepler-186d and Kepler-186, orbit every 4, 7, 13 and 22 days, respectively, making them very hot and inhospitable for life as we know it.
The Kepler space telescope infers the existence of a planet by the amount of starlight blocked when it passes in front of its star. From these data, a planet’s radius, orbital period and the amount of energy recieved from the host star can be determined.
The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds.
> Read more about Kepler-186f
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Using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone” — the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.
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Using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone” — the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.
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Two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station will conduct a spacewalk in the coming week to replace a failed backup computer relay system on the space station’s truss. The activity, designated U.S. EVA 26, will be broadcast live on NASA Television and previewed in a briefing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston at 9:30 a.m. EDT Friday, April 18.
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