mindblowingscience:

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) just sent 20 satellites into orbit with one launch, marking the largest satellite launch in the space agency’s history.

Their previous record was 10 satellites delivered with one mission, and this latest accomplishment takes them a lot closer to the delivery rates of NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency, solidifying India’s place in the global space market.

Out of the 20 satellites, 17 were commercial, so used by companies to help us do things like get better TV signals or weather forecasts. The main cargo, though, was the ISRO’s 725.5-kilogram (1,599-pound) Cartosat-2 - a satellite used for earth observation much like NASA’s Landsat program.

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kidsneedscience:

nasa:

The International Space Station is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of five miles per second (or 17,500 miles per hour), orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.

Monday, May 16, marks the International Space Station’s 100,000th orbit!

That’s more than 2,643,342,240 miles traveled! Which is also like 10 round trips to Mars, OR nearly the distance to Neptune!

The space station has been in orbit for over 17 years, and during that time, over 1,922 research investigations have been performed. More than 1,200 scientific results publications have been produced as a result. 

Important studies like the VEGGIE experiment, which is working to grow plants in microgravity, and the Twin’s Study, which is studying the impacts of microgravity on the human body, are helping us on our journey to Mars. Using this unique orbiting laboratory as a place to conduct research is helping us learn important things for future deep space missions. 

There have even been 222 different people that have visited the space station. This includes the current crew that is working and living on orbit. 

Did you know that the space station is the third brightest object in the sky? If you know when and where to look up, you can spot it on your own! Find out when and where to look up HERE. 

On Snapchat? Watch today’s Live Story to discover more about the orbiting laboratory and get a tour of the station! You can also add ‘nasa’ on Snapchat to get a regular dose of space. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Too cool not to reblog this!

spaceexp:

NASA - Kepler Space Telescope patch.

May 10, 2016

NASA’s Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date.

“This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth.”

Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.

Image above: This artist’s concept depicts select planetary discoveries made to date by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Image Credits: NASA/W. Stenzel.

“Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars,” said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. “This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe.”

Kepler captures the discrete signals of distant planets – decreases in brightness that occur when planets pass in front of, or transit, their stars – much like the May 9 Mercury transit of our sun. Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system more than two decades ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, one-by-one process of verifying suspected planets.

This latest announcement, however, is based on a statistical analysis method that can be applied to many planet candidates simultaneously. Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey and lead author of the scientific paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, employed a technique to assign each Kepler candidate a planet-hood probability percentage – the first such automated computation on this scale, as previous statistical techniques focused only on sub-groups within the greater list of planet candidates identified by Kepler.

“Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs,” said Morton. “If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you’re going to need a broom. This statistical analysis is our broom.”

In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun’s habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.

“They say not to count our chickens before they’re hatched, but that’s exactly what these results allow us to do based on probabilities that each egg (candidate) will hatch into a chick (bona fide planet),” said Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets – a number that’s needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds.”

Kepler Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA

Of the nearly 5,000 total planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler. Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. For four years, Kepler monitored 150,000 stars in a single patch of sky, measuring the tiny, telltale dip in the brightness of a star that can be produced by a transiting planet. In 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will use the same method to monitor 200,000 bright nearby stars and search for planets, focusing on Earth and Super-Earth-sized.

Ames manages the Kepler missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system, with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Related link:

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS): http://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov/

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

For briefing materials from Tuesday’s media teleconference where the new group of planets was announced, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Felicia Chou/Karen Northon/Ames Research Center/Michele Johnson.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch
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spaceexp:

Moscow (Sputnik) May 09, 2016
Russian experts conducted the first tests of the advanced Federatsia (Federation) manned spacecraft’s human-machine interface at a unique ergonomic simulator for the piloted transport vehicle, the Energia space corporation said in a statement Thursday. The ergonomic simulator very closely replicates the crew seats in the command module of the spacecraft, as well as the crew’s working condi
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