NASA’s Kepler space telescope finds 12th Earth-like planet. “Today, Earth is a little less lonely.” Jon Jenkins, Kepler scientist The NASA Kepler mission/telescope was launched in 2009. Its goal was to find habitable planets in the Milky Way. The Kepler space telescope is now 64 million miles from Earth. It has found 1,000+ planets, 12 of them potentially habitable. The …
Hubble telescope finds “smiley face” galaxy. The Hubble Telescope has spotted a “smiley face.” The face is a galaxy cluster called SDSS J1038+4849. The orange eyes are two different galaxies. The smile is created by “gravitational lensing.” It occurs due to their gravitational pull bending time and space. The illusion is caused by a psychological trick called pareidolia. The image …
European Space Agency makes history today The Rosetta Spacecraft launched its probe, called Philae. Philae successfully landed on the surface of comet 67P. This is the first time in history a craft has landed on a comet. Philae is about the size of a home washing machine. Its 2 harpoons, meant to anchor it to the comet, failed to fire. …
MAVEN traveled 442 million miles to the red planet NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft reached Mars on Sunday evening. The craft made the 442 million mile trips in 10 months. MAVEN is now orbiting Mars collecting atmospheric data. Scientists want to know what happened to water on Mars. They believe the upper atmosphere may hold clues. There are 3 other crafts orbiting …
NASA telescope observes light bending NASA’s NuSTAR telescope photographs black holes. It found a very unique black hole called Markarian 335. It is unique because it is near a light source: a corona. Coronas emit X-rays, which NuSTAR can see. NuSTAR has photographed X-rays being sucked into the black hole. Scientists now have an incredible view of Einstein’s theory …