Kepler mission

djhaxman

Reckon we should have a separate thread to keep track of what's going on with this great piece of equipment.

So, to get the ball rolling -

The official website : http://kepler.nasa.gov/

Mission manager updates : http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/mmu/

And yesterday's video conference from Denmark :

http://www.universetoday.com/76578/watch-kepler-press-conference-today-live-on-universe-today/

There is also an update due from Bill Borucki and his mates at NASA next month at some point where they are expected to announce new discoveries and validate planet Kepler 9d.

Plug

Got some fright in that video when your man switched on her microphone, I turned my speakers up full blast to see what was going on:D

Beeker

This is truly one fantastic mission. This spacecraft will tell us just how widespread Earth like planets are in the galaxy, indeed the universe:)One more piece in the Drake equation.
http://www.setileague.org/general/drake.htm

djhaxman

Not much to report lately except a small problem which seems to have been fixed. We must be due an update soon.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/mmu/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=84

Coarsepoint-Finepoint anomaly and recovery
12.14.2010

During a regularly scheduled contact with the Kepler spacecraft on Dec. 13, 2010, the project team discovered Kepler had experienced an anomaly. Kepler was found in coarse point attitude, as opposed to finepoint. Coarse point means the Kepler is using its star trackers for pointing at the Kepler Field-of-View (FOV) instead of the fine guidance sensors that are hard-mounted to the Kepler focal plane array. To properly track Kepler’s target stars with fine accuracy, Kepler must be in finepoint attitude.

Project engineers began analysis of the situation to determine the cause of the anomaly. They determined that Kepler failed to transition properly from coarse point to finepoint attitude after a pre-planned momentum wheel de-saturation. Momentum wheel de-saturations occur on a regular basis for the spacecraft, approximately every three-and-one-half days. The de-saturation uses thrusters to dump momentum buildup on Kepler’s reaction wheels, which spin continuously to counter the solar wind, which pushes on the spacecraft body as Kepler points at its FOV.

The project team was able to recover the spacecraft to finepoint relatively quickly. Only 13 hours of science data collection were interrupted by this anomaly. The team will continue to evaluate telemetry from the event to confirm the root cause, and develop any further mitigations. The Kepler mission budgets for interruptions in the mission, including scheduled maintenance on the spacecraft and anomalies such as this. The mission remains well within the budget outages allowed.

Meanwhile, the project science team is preparing for Kepler-related sessions at the upcoming American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Wash., in early January. The Science Team also is preparing for the planned Feb. 1, 2011 release of Quarter 2 data and release of sequestered target data from Quarter 0 and Quarter 1.

Beeker

djhaxman wrote: »

Not much to report lately except a small problem which seems to have been fixed. We must be due an update soon.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/mmu/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=84

Hope so but they did say at the start that a number of years would be needed to watch the group of stars for planet passes or "dimming" to be established. So we will have to be patient:)

Lunar Junkie

They want to get at least three observations of the star dimming before they come to a conclusion about any particular suspected planet.. So we should hopefully start to get announcements of planets orbiting on a similar period to Earth in around 18 months to 2 years from now. I'm sure they'll find plenty of other interesting stuff on shorter orbits before then.

rccaulfield

Once we do find a earth like viable planet whats the next step?

djhaxman

rccaulfield wrote: »

Once we do find a earth like viable planet whats the next step?

We find more!

I guess try and find out what it's atmosphere is like, and try to image it with future telescopes but thats really all we can do. It's just confirmation that earth like planets exist that we're all after.

djhaxman

Now we can all get involved in the search for extrasolar planets.

http://www.planethunters.org/

djhaxman

Finally, it's starting to deliver

See the rest of the article on http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/kepler-rocky-world/?

The planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope has spotted its first rocky exoplanet, astronomers announced today at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

“This is the first unquestionably rocky planet orbiting a star outside our solar system,” said astronomer Natalie Batalha of San Jose State University, a member of the Kepler team. “It’s an important milestone for our team, and I think it’s an important milestone for humanity.”

The new planet, called Kepler 10-b, orbits a sun-like star 560 light-years away. It was first spotted in July 2009 as it crossed, or transited, in front of its parent star.

The amount of starlight the planet blocked told astronomers that the planet is just 1.4 times the radius of Earth, making it the smallest exoplanet yet discovered. The planet blocked about a ten-thousandth of its star’s light, “like if you had 10,000 light bulbs and take one away,” Batalha said.

But the light dimming wasn’t enough to tell astronomers how massive the planet is, a key clue to its composition. To figure out its mass, the team took 40 follow-up measurements with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii. As the planet orbits, its gravity gently pulls its parent star back and forth. Precise measurements of these tiny gravitational nudges let astronomers calculate the planet’s mass.

These measurements revealed that the planet is just 4.6 times the Earth’s mass. Combining the mass with the radius gives the planet’s density, which, Batalha says, can only be explained by a rocky composition.

rccaulfield

Wow! Does a dense world like that rule out the possibilty of earth-like life i wonder? What star is it and is it in the goldilocks zone?

mgsrocks

rccaulfield wrote: »

Wow! Does a dense world like that rule out the possibilty of earth-like life i wonder? What star is it and is it in the goldilocks zone?

No chance of life I'm afraid:

Unfortunately, the new rocky world is hot enough to melt iron. It orbits its star once every 0.84 days, meaning the planet is 23 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun. At such a close orbiting distance, the planet shows the same face to the star at all times, the same way the moon always shows the same face to the Earth. Temperatures on the daytime side of the planet would reach 2780 degrees Fahrenheit, as hot as some red dwarf stars.

rccaulfield

mgsrocks wrote: »

No chance of life I'm afraid:

Thanks!- Found this on that planet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFoaxtX6pvU
EDIT-fixed the link, i've never seen youtube embedded work on this site?

Plug

Its a start i suppose, now to find one in the goldilocks zone.

clln

cheers dj for keeping this mission updated,the potential is hugh for mind blowing results! TY!

NUTZZ

rccaulfield wrote: »

Thanks!- Found this on that planet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFoaxtX6pvU
EDIT-fixed the link, i've never seen youtube embedded work on this site?

Here you go!

Beeker

Latest news on new planets found will be announced tomorrow Feb 2 at 18:00 Irish time.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/jan/HQ_M11-020_Kepler.html

djhaxman

Missed the conference but there's been 6 new planets discovered

http://www.universetoday.com/83030/kepler-discovers-6-planet-exo-solar-system/?

clln

djhaxman wrote: »

Missed the conference but there's been 6 new planets discovered

http://www.universetoday.com/83030/kepler-discovers-6-planet-exo-solar-system/?

Thanks djhaxman,it really is all very exciting is'nt it?
hopefully one of them has no banks!

mgsrocks

Seems it found more then just 6 new planets. 5 earth size planets within the habitable zone and increases the number of planet candidates 1235. Cant wait to see what the follow ups find out about the earth sized planets:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/feb/HQ_11-030_Kepler_Update.html

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday, Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter.

Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system."

All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.

The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation.

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them. This is known as a transit.

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest the spacecraft finds.

The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

djhaxman

Have posted anything in here in a while, but Kepler is turning out to be really prolific.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-kepler-astounding-haul-multiple-planet.html?

Beeker

djhaxman wrote: »

Have posted anything in here in a while, but Kepler is turning out to be really prolific.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-kepler-astounding-haul-multiple-planet.html?

It really is a gem of a mission! Fantastic following its results:)

Plug

The best thing since Hubble I think:)

Ardent

And it's fascinating to think that Kepler is only able to detect planets in relatively flat solar systems. How many more undetected worlds are there out there?!

I wish I could live a million years so that I could see the day when humans step foot on another world in another solar sysem!

Rubecula

It may still happen in your lifetime, no matter how unlikely it seems Ardent.

Beeker

Kepler still doing the business with newly discovered planets. Kepler has now confirmed 60 planets and 2300 candidate planets.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1201/26kepler/

Ardent

Ardent wrote: »

And it's fascinating to think that Kepler is only able to detect planets in relatively flat solar systems. How many more undetected worlds are there out there?!

I wish I could live a million years so that I could see the day when humans step foot on another world in another solar sysem!

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/gj-667cc-fourth-planet-that-could-support-life-found-20120203-1qw53.html

The latest planet is 22 ly away. I think we will find a planet nearer in the habitable zone in the next few years or even months. Organising and sending a mission could take a few decades though. Damn recessions stall these things though :P the US is picking up fingers crossed. Its still possible! Maybe CERN will find out if a Hawking type spaceship is possible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship

Myrddin

Deleted User wrote: »

Organising and sending a mission could take a few decades though

The very nearest star is 4 light years away. It's gonna take a LOT more than a few decades I think

djhaxman

Latest news from Kepler, if you have time to watch the whole hour of the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtw-RrbWpY4

how often do they release results?