NASA Kepler celebrates five years in space

The panel features an image of NASA Kepler's launch and artist concepts of milestone discoveries (l to r): Kepler-9b and c, Kepler-10b, Kepler-11, Kepler-16b, Kepler-22 and Kepler-64f. 

The final panel illustrates exoplanet discoveries: blue is previous; red is previous Kepler; gold is Kepler's on Feb. 26. 

Credit: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel

Five years ago today, on March 6, 2009, NASA Kepler Space Telescope rocketed into the night skies above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to find planets around other stars, called exoplanets, in search of potentially habitable worlds.

Since then, NASA Kepler has unveiled a whole new side of our galaxy—one that is teeming with planets. Because of Kepler we now know that most stars have planets, Earth-sized planets are common, and planets quite unlike those in our solar system exist.

By analyzing Kepler data, scientists have identified more than 3,600 candidates believed to be planets, and verified that 961 of those candidates actually are planets, many as small as Earth.

Discoveries made using Kepler now account for more than half of all the known exoplanets.

William Borucki

"During the last five years, Kepler has produced results needed to take the next big step forward in humankind's search for life in our galaxy, providing information needed for future missions that will ultimately determine the atmospheric composition of Earth-sized exoplanets to discover if they could be habitable," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Kepler's finds include planets that orbit in the habitable zone, the range of distances from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. 

The habitable zone is the sweet spot around a star where temperatures are right for water to exist in its liquid form. 

Liquid water is essential for life on Earth.

Kepler-22's star is a bit smaller than our sun, so its habitable zone is slightly closer in. 

The diagram shows an artist's rendering of the planet comfortably orbiting within the habitable zone, similar to where Earth circles the sun. Kepler-22b has a yearly orbit of 289 days. 

The planet is the smallest known to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It's about 2.4 times the size of Earth.

Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

One example of a habitable zone planet found by the mission is known as Kepler-22b.

At 2.4 times the size of Earth, it is thought to be too big to be rocky and support life.

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

Scientists believe other habitable zone planets found by the Kepler mission might be rocky, such as Kepler-62f, which is 40 percent larger in size than Earth.

A twin to Earth, a planet with the same temperature and size as Earth, has not yet been identified, but the analysis is far from over as scientists continue to search the Kepler data for the tiny signature of such a planet.

Other Kepler discoveries include hundreds of star systems hosting multiple planets, and have established a new class of planetary system where planets orbit more than one sun.

In August of last year, the mission ended its science observations after a faulty reaction wheel affected the telescope's ability to point precisely.

The mission may be able to operate in a different mode, and continue to do science.

This next-generation mission proposal, called K2, will be considered for funding by NASA in the 2014 Astrophysics Senior Review of Operating Missions.

Geckos in space: Novel robot takes a step to cosmos

Abigaille, a wall-crawling robot inspired by the gecko, has taken a small but important step towards a future in space, ESA scientists said on Thursday.

The tiny legged prototype could be the forerunner of automatons which crawl along the hulls of spacecraft, cleaning and maintaining them, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

Its footpads are covered with dry microfibres modelled on the toe hair of the gecko, which is celebrated for its ability to scuttle up windows and along walls yet not leave a trace.

The lizard does the trick through millions of ultra-fine hairs called setae, which interact with the climbing surface to create a molecular attraction known as the van der Waals force.

A handout photo released on January 2, 2013 by the European Space Agency shows the six-legged Abigaille climbing robot, which is able to transition from vertical to horizontal surfaces.

Credit: ESA

Researchers at Canada's Simon Fraser University first built a 240-gramme (eight-ounce) tank-like gecko-bot, using tracks with microfibre treads.

They then developed this into a six-legged climbing robot, nicknamed Abigaille.

"This approach is an example of biomimicry, taking engineering solutions from the natural world," said team leader Mike Henrey.

The "dry adhesive" that helps Abigaille climb walls has now been put through its paces at a materials-testing lab at ESA's European Space and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Replicating the vacuum and temperatures of space, but not the zero gravity, the tests found that the adhesive worked like a charm, the agency said.

"A depth-sensing indentation instrument was used inside a vacuum chamber to precisely assess the dry adhesive's sticking performance," ESA specialist Laurent Pambaguian said in a press release.

"Experimental success means deployment in space might one day be possible."

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope: Completes five years in space - mission extended

This view shows the entire sky at energies greater than 1 GeV based on five years of data from the LAT instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Brighter colors indicate brighter gamma-ray sources. 

Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

During its five-year primary mission, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has given astronomers an increasingly detailed portrait of the universe's most extraordinary phenomena, from giant black holes in the hearts of distant galaxies to thunderstorms on Earth.

But its job is not done yet. On Aug. 11, Fermi entered an extended phase of its mission—a deeper study of the high-energy cosmos. This is a significant step toward the science team's planned goal of a decade of observations, ending in 2018.

"As Fermi opens its second act, both the spacecraft and its instruments remain in top-notch condition and the mission is delivering outstanding science," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division in Washington.

Paul Hertz

Fermi has revolutionized our view of the universe in gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.

The observatory's findings include new insights into many high-energy processes, from rapidly rotating neutron stars, also known as pulsars, within our own galaxy, to jets powered by supermassive black holes in far-away young galaxies.

The Large Area Telescope (LAT), the mission's main instrument, scans the entire sky every three hours.

The state-of-the-art detector has sharper vision, a wider field of view, and covers a broader energy range than any similar instrument previously flown.

Peter Michelson

"As the LAT builds up an increasingly detailed picture of the gamma-ray sky, it simultaneously reveals how dynamic the universe is at these energies," said Peter Michelson, the instrument's principal investigator and a professor of physics at Stanford University in California.

Fermi's secondary instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), sees all of the sky at any instant, except the portion blocked by Earth.

This all-sky coverage lets Fermi detect more gamma-ray bursts, and over a broader energy range, than any other mission.

These explosions, the most powerful in the universe, are thought to accompany the birth of new stellar-mass black holes.

Bill Paciesas

"More than 1,200 gamma-ray bursts, plus 500 flares from our sun and a few hundred flares from highly magnetized neutron stars in our galaxy have been seen by the GBM," said principal investigator Bill Paciesas, a senior scientist at the Universities Space Research Association's Science and Technology Institute in Huntsville, Ala.

One of Fermi's most striking results so far was the discovery of giant bubbles extending more than 25,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy.

Scientists think these structures may have formed as a result of past outbursts from the black hole—with a mass of 4 million suns—residing in the heart of our galaxy.