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How NASA Is Planning To Explore Our Solar System

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Here is how NASA is planning to explore our solar system

Here is how NASA is planning to explore our solar system: The Agency has ambitious plans for the future. NASA wants to build bigger and better telescopes. The Agency also wants to continue exploring Mars, and it’s keeping an eye on Jupiter’s moons.

The Juno mission is going to reveal the first close-up images of Jupiter, on the 27th of August, during the spacecraft’s planet flyby. NASA wants to keep exploring the solar system, to answer basic questions like how humanity came to be, where we are going and whether we’re alone in space.

Even in our solar system, there are a lot of promising worlds and objects which remain uncharted, says NASA Director Jim Green. The future missions will focus on these distant and enigmatic worlds.

The James Webb Telescope, which is going to be launched in 2018, will be able to observe dimly lit objects across the universe, and also all neighboring planets and their moons. It will have an unparalleled degree of finesse, and it will be able to follow geologic activity.

One of Jupiter’s moons – Io, has an intense geological activity. This volcanically active world will also be looked at by the James Web Telescope for follow-up information. Another source of hope and questions is Europa – a mysterious moon, which may have a liquid ocean beneath the icy surface.

The veteran Hubble telescope, with its upgraded instruments, has photographed Jupiter’s auroras and found evidence of saltwater on Jupiter’s Ganymede. The Hubble mission has been extended for five more years, and NASA believes it will continue to amaze us.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is currently exploring Saturn, with its rings and moons. It has been doing that since 2004. In 2017, will be the final stage of Cassini’s long mission. It will dive 22 times between Saturn’s outer atmosphere and the ring of asteroids and moons. These plunges are going to be part of the Grand Finale, which will provide scientists with new insights and answers.

Titan is a major Saturn satellite. It has a rich atmosphere and surface chemistry. It will continue to be explored by the James Webb Telescope after the Cassini mission ends.

NASA’s Dawn mission is going to take a look at two large, intact asteroids inside our solar system. These are called Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.

Many other missions and discoveries will follow, in the years to come.

Image Source – Pixabay

CERN restarts Large Hadron Collider after two years to study Big Bang

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The scientists across the globe looked on with bated breath as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was restarted on Sunday at CERN, a particle physics laboratory near Geneva, after being kept in the shutdown mode for an important upgrade for almost two years since February 14, 2013.

“Congratulations…Now the hard work starts,” Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN director general told thousands of employees from the control room upon successful restart of the LHC.

[Press Release] Proton beams are back in the LHC http://t.co/OMgJ6w84Cr #RestartLHC pic.twitter.com/rdTsuCkWLk

— CERNpress (@CERNpress) April 5, 2015

Today’s the day! Beams to circulate in the LHC for 1st time in 2 years. Follow the action here http://t.co/gpstfXp2mT #RestartLHC

— CERN (@CERN) April 5, 2015

According to the scientists, the LHC will take roughly a month when the results of the first collisions will start appearing.

Once the LHC starts working in full swing, the priority of physicists will be to discover the dark matter during current run.

The dark matter is the invisible material that constitutes over 25 percent of the universe.

The discovery of the hidden extra dimensions will be equally important as it will explain the reason behind the weakness of gravity as compared to other forces of nature. Moreover, it will offer an explanation for why the world is not composed of anti-matter.

The scientists behind the project will be well equipped with the latest modifications of the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC has been equipped with safer magnets having Quench protection. This will help in dissipating energy in a more controlled manner. The most exciting transformation for the scientists will be the higher energy of the proton beam. According to the scientists, LHC can now circulate the beams of 13 Trillion electron Volts (TeV) which is five notches above the previous 8 TeV.

This will result in high energetic collisions, making the chances of detecting newer particles brighter. To raise the collisions rate, the lag between two proton packets was lowered to 25 nanoseconds from the earlier 50 nanoseconds.

The scientists have also tried to make the Large Hadron Collider machine safer with the use of radiation resistant electronics. Moreover, the scientists used non-evaporating getter inhibiting electron cloud buildup for covering the interiors of the vacuum tube.

 

Large Hadron Collider restarts after two-year refit to study Big Bang

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The ambitious Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment of the scientists at Europe’s particle physics research centre CERN to study ‘Big Bang theory’ was restarted on Sunday after two-year refit.

The re-operationalization of LHC has once again embarked a new bid to find answers to some of the interesting mysteries of the universe and explore the ‘dark matter’.

The LHC machine was shut down for two years for undergoing a refit.

According to the researchers, the success of the second run completely depends upon lying in breaking out of the ‘Standard Model’ of the working of the universe at the elementary particles level and into “New Physics”.

That also includes exploring for the dark matter that constitutes approximately 96 percent of the components of the universe but can only be spotted by its influence on visible matter such as planets and galaxies.

The astronomers and space scientists are preparing for particle-smashing collisions likely to begin in June, though any new discoveries made are not expected to emerge until middle of 2016.

The overhaul included new magnets, which is much higher voltages and energy beams and an entire check of all wiring around the underground 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider and its four key detectors and multiple magnets.

Elaborating upon the research organisation’s live blog for the LHC restart, CERN Director General Rolf Heuer, said, “It’s fantastic to see it going so well after two years and such a major overhaul.”

During the last run, between 2010 and 2013, the scientists kept a track record of the Higgs boson particle after several years of hunt in the recorded debris from the collisions of particle at CERN as well as in other smaller colliders.

In two months, the European research center will commence the smashing of particles into each other in the Large Hadron Collider with about two times the energy than that of the first run that occurred between 2010 and 2013, and as before at close to the speed of light.

Study suggests existence of super-Earths that were destroyed by Jupiter  

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A new study has suggested the existence of several “super-Earths” before the formation of today’s planets.

According to the researchers, these super-Earths were destroyed by Jupiter before the formation of planets presently existing in our solar system.

The researchers began the study aiming to find out the answers for “why our solar system is the way it is” and “why the masses of planets vary with many having low masses in comparison to the other solar systems in the galaxy.

Konstantin Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science at Caltech, said, “The study shows that the inward-outward migration of the biggest planet Jupiter could have destroyed a first generation of planets and have further set the stage for the formation of the mass-depleted terrestrial planets existing in our solar system today.”

“All of this fits amazingly with other recent developments in comprehending the evolution of solar imagessystem, while filling in some gaps,” Batygin added.

The scientists claimed that several solar systems have more planets with large masses and our solar system stands out among them.

The researchers said that the biggest planet Jupiter may have destroyed other smaller counterparts. They explains the planet may have drifted away from the Sun which would have preferably led to the destruction of smaller ones with low mass. According to the researchers, several broken planets could have possibly drifted into the Sun.

The findings of the study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jupiter may have destroyed the inner solar system

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jupiterAccording to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the planets in our solar system are actually a second generation with the first generation of orbiting planets being destroyed.

It is said that the gas giant Jupiter before orbiting in its current state has invaded the early inner solar system and sweeped away all the planets orbiting in the inner solar system.

The scientist could possibly explain why our solar system is differently constituted when compared to other planetary system orbiting different stars.

Planetary scientist Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology said, “indeed, it appears that the solar system today is not the common representative of the galactic planetary census, instead we are something of an outlier.”

According to him in all the other planetary system there are planets which are very close to sun and if that is considered normal then our planetary system should also have planets which are closer to sun than Mercury.

In other planetary system there are few super earth rock like worlds which are about 10 times the size of the earth and they are orbiting closer to the sun than Mercury. They also posses’ gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn but they are very close to sun rather than far from the star like in our solar system.

This makes our solar system look odd, said the other astronomer.

The theory which is supporting our solar system being unique is the Grand Track theory.

According to this theory Jupiter after its formation got pulled towards the sun and caught up in the pull of interplanetary dust and went rampaging through inner solar system and when Saturn caught it in its own gravitational pull the rampage ended and they pulled each other to occupy their current positions.

Jupiter could have disrupted the orbits of the protoplanets, which led to a chain reaction of destructive collision. This debris could have destroyed planets caught up in Jupiter’s rampage.

“It’s the same thing we worry about if satellites were to be destroyed in low-Earth orbit,” says Laughlin, he further explained how this chain of reactions could cause the debris to crash into other satellites.

He finally concluded by saying “Our work indicates that Jupiter would have created just such a collisional cascade in the inner solar system.”

ESA’s Rosetta detects molecular nitrogen on Comet 67P

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European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta probe mission has detected peculiar mix of molecular nitrogen on the Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, offering crucial clues to the conditions that led to the birth of the solar system.

The study was led by Martin Rubin, a scientist at the space research and planetary sciences division of Switzerland’s University of Bern.

According to the scientists, molecular nitrogen has played a very crucial role in the formation of the young solar system.

The scientists at the European Space Agency said that the detection of molecular nitrogen suggests that Comet 67P was formed under low-temperature conditions, which is required to keep nitrogen in the form of ice).

The astronomers explain as nitrogen is also available on planets and moons in the outer solar system, the latest discovery made by Rosetta clearly implies that the family of comets of 67P has also formed in the same region.

“Its detection is particularly important since molecular nitrogen is thought to have been the most common type of nitrogen available when the solar system was forming. In the colder outer regions, it likely provided the main source of nitrogen that was incorporated into the gas planets. It also dominates the dense atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan and is present in the atmospheres and surface ices on Pluto and on Neptune’s moon Triton,” the ESA officials wrote in an issued statement.

The Rosetta spacecraft used the ROSINA instrument (Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis) last year between October 17 and October 23 for detecting the presence of molecular nitrogen on the comet. At that time, the Rosetta spacecraft was orbiting only 6.2 miles (or 10 kilometers) from the center of Comet 67P.

The more surprising thing for the scientists was the ratio of molecular nitrogen to carbon monoxide present in the comet. According to them, the ratio was 25 times less than the expectations derived from the models of the early solar system.

Scientists explain the unexpectedly low ratio is caused from the manner in which the formation of ice took place at extremely low temperatures.

The findings were detailed in the journal Science.

Study Says Planets Outside Solar System More Hospitable Than Expected

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Study Says Planets Outside Solar System More Hospitable Than Expected

The University of Toronto astrophysicists conducted a study, revealing that planets outside the solar system are more hospitable than thought. These planets, called exoplanets have liquid water along with more habitable environment than expected.

Jeremy Leconte, lead author of the study, said planets with probable oceans could offer a climate much similar to Earth’s. Initially, scientists thought exoplanets behave in a manner contrary to Earth, but the study suggests that exoplanets rotate around their own stars, spinning at a speed in order to exhibit similar to Earth’s day-night cycle. However, the exoplanet’s ability to develop life remains a big question, considering the planets’ climate increases.

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