Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Kepler) News

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: April 19, 2013 6:14:44 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and Kepler) News - April 19, 2013 and JSC Today

Happy Friday everyone. Have a great and safe weekend.

Friday, April 19, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Today -- Watch the Space Station Spacewalk on NASA TV
2.            Houston Fire Department Training On-site Saturday
3.            Learn About Flight Experiment Requirements
4.            Earth Day Shirts Available at Starport
5.            Recent JSC Announcements
6.            Society of Women Engineers (SWE) -- Texas Space Center Section Social Hour
7.            Fire Protection and Prevention in Construction ViTS: May 10, Building 17, Room 2026
8.            Scaffold Users Seminar ViTS May 24: Building 17, Room 2026
________________________________________     NASA FACT
" A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts a striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009."
________________________________________
1.            Today -- Watch the Space Station Spacewalk on NASA TV
Two members of the Expedition 35 crew will venture outside the International Space Station tomorrow, April 19, for a six-hour spacewalk to deploy and retrieve several science experiments and replace a navigational aid.
NASA TV will broadcast the spacewalk live beginning at 8:30 a.m. CDT. Russian flight engineers Pavel Vinogradov and Roman Romanenko will open the hatch to the Pirs airlock and docking compartment to start the spacewalk at 9:06 a.m.
This spacewalk will be the 167th in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the seventh for Vinogradov and the first for Romanenko. Both spacewalkers will wear spacesuits marked by blue stripes. Romanenko's suit will be equipped with a helmet camera to provide close-up views of the spacewalk activity as it progresses.
JSC employees with wired computer network connections can view NASA TV using onsite IPTV on channels 404 (standard definition) or 4541 (HD). IPTV works best using Internet Explorer. If you are having problems viewing the video using these systems, contact the Information Resources Directorate Customer Support Center at x46367.
For more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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2.            Houston Fire Department Training On-site Saturday
The Houston Fire Department will be conducting a training exercise on-site on Saturday, April 20, in the afternoon. The exercise will be in front of Building 419 and run along Avenue B.
Ronald Lee 832-646-4761

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3.            Learn About Flight Experiment Requirements
Join the Human Systems Academy for a lecture that will cover the process and challenges in implementing human life sciences experiments aboard the International Space Station. It will specifically address the process for getting experiments selected for flight through the Human Research Program and explain how complements of human life sciences research are developed. It will also touch on some of the unique challenges in conducting human life sciences research in space.
For registration, please go to: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:10:00 AM
Event Location: B1/320

Add to Calendar

Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov

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4.            Earth Day Shirts Available at Starport
NASA is Leading the Greening. Show your support with these attractive green-on-black Earth Day T-shirts -- just $16.50. Available in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops, or order online.
ShopNASA x35352 http://shopnasa.com/store/product/1274/Earth-Day-Shirt-S/

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5.            Recent JSC Announcements
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcements:
JSCA 13-011: Communications with Industry Procurement Solicitation for the Human Health and Institutional Management Support Contract
JSCA 13-012: Key Personnel Assignment - Mark Weyland
Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.
Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx

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6.            Society of Women Engineers (SWE) -- Texas Space Center Section Social Hour
Join your fellow engineers and friends over some fine sweets (beverages), treats and SWE camaraderie at our: April Social Hour
Date: Thursday, April 25
Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Chelsea Wine Bar (4106 NASA Parkway, El Lago, 77586)
If the weather permits, we'll be on the second floor deck. If it's looking gloomy, we'll still be on the second floor (just not the deck).
Hope to see you there!
Event Date: Thursday, April 25, 2013   Event Start Time:5:00 PM   Event End Time:7:00 PM
Event Location: Chelsea Wine Bar 4106 Nasa Pkwy El Lago, TX 77586

Add to Calendar

Irene Chan x41378

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7.            Fire Protection and Prevention in Construction ViTS: May 10, Building 17, Room 2026
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0070: This basic course introduces the student to the recognition of potential fire hazards and procedures required to meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 1926.150 - Fire Protection; 1926.151 - Fire Prevention; 1926.152 - Flammable and Combustible Liquids; 1926.153 - Liquefied Petroleum Gas; 1926.154 - Temporary Heating Devices; 1926.155 - Definitions to This Subpart F to Minimize Losses Due to Fires. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Shirley Robinson x41284

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8.            Scaffold Users Seminar ViTS May 24: Building 17, Room 2026
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0316: This four-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) CFR 1910.28 and 1926.451, requirements for scaffolding safety in the general and construction industries. During the course, the student will receive an overview of those topics needed to work safely on scaffolds, including standards, terminology and inspection of scaffold components; uses of scaffolds; fall protection requirements; signs and barricades; and more. Those individuals desiring to become "competent persons" for scaffolds should take the three-day Scaffold Safety course, SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0312. This course will be primarily presented via the NASA target audience: Safety, Reliability, Quality and Maintainability Professionals; or anyone working on operations requiring the use of scaffolds. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit. Use this direct link for registration: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Shirley Robinson x41284

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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

NASA TV:
·         8:30 am Central (9:30 EDT) – E35 Russian EVA coverage (P Vinogradov & R Romanenko)
·         ~9:06 am Central (10:06 EDT) – EVA start time (targeted to last approx 6 hours)
·         1 pm Central SATURDAY (2 EDT) – 2013 Astronaut Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
·         3:30 pm Central SATURDAY (4:30 EDT) –Antares Test Flight launch coverage
·         4 pm Central SATURDAY (5 EDT) – LAUNCH
·         ~5 pm Central SATURDAY (6 EDT) – Antares Post-Test Flight- News Conference

Human Spaceflight News
Friday, April 19, 2013

HEADLINES AND LEADS

International Space Station to get 787-style batteries

Paul Marks - New Scientist

NASA is pressing ahead with a plan to install lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station (ISS), New Scientist has learned. The batteries are similar to those used on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner aircraft, all 50 of which have been taken out of commercial service worldwide since January following battery fires on two planes. NASA says that lithium-ion cells offer compelling benefits, and it is confident that any safety issues can be overcome.

Antares launch delayed to Saturday

William Harwood - CBS News

Running two days late because of a minor last-minute technical glitch, Orbital Sciences managers decided Thursday to delay the maiden flight of the company's new Antares rocket one more day to Saturday because of expected bad weather, company officials said. The 133-foot-tall Antares rocket, built to boost unmanned space station cargo ships into orbit, now is targeted for liftoff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Island, Va., facility during a window that opens at 5 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Saturday. The weather is expected to "improve significantly," according to a company update.

Antares vs. Falcon 9: How the two rockets ferrying NASA's cargo differ

Pete Spotts – Christian Science Monitor

Glistening white and standing 130 feet tall, the second of two commercial rockets NASA is relying on to ferry cargo to the International Space Station is set for its first test flight at 5 p.m. EDT Saturday. If all goes well, the Antares rocket, built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp., will join Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s (SpaceX) Falcon 9 as replacements for the space shuttles that carried cargo to and from the ISS. The Falcon 9 and its Dragon cargo capsule already have completed two formal resupply missions to the station.

Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket launch delayed until Saturday

James Dean - Florida Today

Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to try again at 5 p.m. Saturday to launch its Antares rocket for the first time. The rocket would have been ready for the test flight Friday, but the weather forecast was poor at the state's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island in Virginia. Conditions are expected to improve significantly Saturday and Sunday. Dulles, Va.-based Orbital said only "small adjustments" were needed to fix the problem that scrubbed the first Antares launch attempt with 12 minutes left in Wednesday's countdown, when a data cable disconnected prematurely from the rocket's upper stage.

Weather forecast leads to another delay for first Antares rocket launch

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Orbital Sciences Corp. is postponing the maiden launch of its two-stage Antares rocket until Saturday at the earliest, due to an unfavorable weather forecast for Friday. The Antares rocket was originally due to blast off Thursday from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va., and go on an orbital test flight in preparation for cargo trips to the International Space Station. That first launch attempt was aborted with 12 minutes to go in the countdown, because an umbilical data cable was unplugged prematurely from the rocket's upper stage.

Antares rocket launch reset for Saturday evening

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Launch managers have elected to bypass a launch opportunity Friday and schedule another attempt to launch the Antares test flight Saturday at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). The weather forecast for Saturday calls for an 85 percent chance of acceptable conditions. A cold front is expected to bring storms and windy weather to Virginia's Eastern Shore on Friday, but the inclement weather should clear out in time for Saturday evening's three-hour launch window opening at 5 p.m. EDT.

Weather pushes Wallops rocket relaunch to Saturday

Mike Connors - Virginian-Pilot

A test launch of an unmanned rocket from Wallops Flight Facility has been tentatively rescheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday. The launch originally was scheduled for Wednesday evening, but Orbital Sciences Corporation, a private company contracted by NASA that is handling the launch, postponed it a few minutes before 5 p.m. Today, a Wallops press release confirmed a separation of a launch pad chord used for data communications to the Antares rocket halted Wednesday's launch. Engineers are analyzing to determine what needs to be done to resolve the issue. The relaunch initially had been scheduled for Friday evening, but was pushed back because of a forecast for bad weather. Saturday's forecast calls for an 85 percent chance of favorable conditions, the release said. If weather intrudes again, though, Sunday is an available date. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

Really? Bum Ethernet Cable Scrubs Rocket Launch. Sigh

Jason Paur - Wired.com

There's a reason "rocket science" is a cliché. It's really, really hard to pull off a launch, and veteran rocket scientists barely raise an eyebrow when it doesn't happen. The equipment is massively complex. The liquid fuels are dangerous. And the timing involved in getting it all to work is measured in fractions of a second. Despite this, and after spending hundreds of millions of dollars designing, engineering, building and testing everything that goes into making a rocket, Orbital Sciences' Antares performed perfectly. Instead, yesterday's flight was undone by the simplest of issues, the ol' ethernet-cable-getting-yanked-out-of-the-rocket problem.

New Private Rocket Antares: 5 Surprising Facts

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

A new private rocket is set to launch into space for the first time Saturday, potentially marking a leap forward for American commercial spaceflight. Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Antares rocket is slated to blast off from Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) located at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), helping pave the way for eventual cargo missions to the International Space Station. Here are five things you might not have known about Antares...

Yes Virginia, You Do Have Rocket Launches

Tariq Malik - Space.com

When you think of American rocket launches, it's a safe bet that Florida and space shuttles and moon shots come to mind. But some folks might be surprised to know that rockets have been blasting off from Virginia's Eastern Shore for years. If you live on the East Coast between Maine and South Carolina, there's a chance you might be able to see the rocket soar spaceward, according to Orbital Sciences. NASA's Wallops Flight Facility here at the southern tip of Wallops Island was founded in 1945 as a center for aeronautical research and has launched something like 16,000 small sounding rockets during NASA's tenure. In case you missed it, NASA scientists at Wallops launched an absolutely spectacular suborbital rocket flight on Jan. 29. That rocket launch painted the night sky red by releasing a chemical in the upper atmosphere as part of a science experiment. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

NASA shows off SLS, Astros at State Legislature

Associated Press

A space shuttle engine was displayed in front of the Alabama Statehouse to illustrate the impact of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on the state. Two members of the new astronaut class, Kate Rubins and Jack Fischer, answered questions during NASA Day at the Legislature Thursday. They spoke about development of the Space Launch System — the largest, most advanced rocket ever designed. Work on the SLS, meant to take people into deep space, takes place in Huntsville. Patrick Scheuermann, director of the center, says the project is "on time and on budget." The SLS is due to be moved to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in about four years. Scheuermann also told Legislators that work done at MSFC provides technology to agricultural and estuary interests in southern Alabama. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

What happens when you wring out a washcloth in zero-G? Now we know

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

We've recently been reminded about the problems posed by zero-G poop and weightless weeping, but here's a real puzzler for zero-G hygiene: What happens to the water when you wring out a washcloth on the International Space Station? That's the question addressed in Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's latest silly science experiment — and the answer might not be what you expect. This experiment takes the prize ... literally: It was designed by Kendra Lemke and Meredith Faulkner, two 10th-graders at Lockview High School in Fall River, Nova Scotia, and entered in a science contest sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency. A panel of judges selected the "Ring It Out" demonstration as the contest's winner.

Women have advantage in Astronaut Hall of Fame's Class of 2013
Collins, Dunbar, Brown honored in Saturday ceremony

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

Eileen Collins is an accomplished aviator and astronaut, the first woman to pilot a space shuttle, the first women to command a U.S. space mission and one of the first women to graduate from U.S. Air Force test pilot school. But if you had known her in high school, you never would have guessed the shy bookworm would climb so high. "I always tell people if there was a high school award for the person least likely to be an astronaut, it would have been me," Collins said. "I had no idea I would be an astronaut, much less in the hall of fame." Collins, 56, will be inducted Saturday into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame along with fellow fliers Curt Brown and Bonnie Dunbar. The 2013 Hall of Fame class is the first to include two women, and the first in which women outnumber men.

MEANWHILE, FROM KEPLER 448 MILES UP…

Kepler Telescope Spots 3 New Planets In The 'Goldilocks Zone'

Joe Palca - National Public Radio

Astronomers have found three planets orbiting far-off stars that are close to Earth-sized and in the "habitable zone": a distance from their suns that makes the planets' surfaces neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. One of the three planets orbits a star with the prosaic name Kepler-69. "Kepler-69 is a sun-like star," says Thomas Barclay, a research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute who uses the Kepler space telescope, which is on a mission to search for Earth-like planets. It finds planets by looking for tiny dips in the light coming from a star. The dips come when a planet passes in front of a star. By measuring the interval between dips, astronomers can figure out how long it takes a planet to orbit its star.

Kepler closing in on Earth-like planets

William Harwood - CBS News

Slowly but surely closing in on an answer to a fundamental question -- how common are Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars? -- NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered the smallest worlds yet found orbiting in or near the habitable zones of two distant suns, researchers announced Thursday. While all three planets are larger than Earth, they are the closest analogues yet found orbiting in the region around their parent stars where water could exist as a liquid, a critical necessity for the evolution of life as it is currently understood.

NASA sees distant planets that seem ideal for life

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

NASA's planet-hunting telescope has discovered two planets that seem like ideal places for some sort of life to flourish. And they are just the right size and in just the right place. One is toasty, the other nippy. The distant duo are the best candidates for habitable planets that astronomers have found so far, said William Borucki, the chief scientist for NASA's Kepler telescope. And it's got astronomers thinking that similar planets that are just about right for life - "Goldilocks planets" - might be common in the universe.

Space telescope spots distant planets well placed for life

Irene Klotz - Reuters

Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope have found the best candidates yet for habitable worlds beyond the solar system, including a pair of potentially life-friendly planets orbiting the same star, officials said on Thursday. The planets join a list of about 700 confirmed extra-solar planets discovered since 1995. The new additions include a pair of planets orbiting a star called Kepler-62, located about 1,200 light years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler telescope spots two planets in life-friendly orbit

Joel Achenbach - Washington Post

The Washington Post Planet-hunting astronomers revealed Thursday that they'd found two tantalizing worlds, seemingly congenial to life as we know it, orbiting a star 1,200 light-years away. Neither planet has been seen directly, and whether they actually harbor living things is speculative. Their presence has been inferred by the dimming of their parent star at regular intervals, as observed by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler 62-f is just a bit larger than Earth — 1.41 Earth radii, to be precise — and it's in the so-called Goldilocks position, orbiting the star (Kepler 62) at a distance where water could be splashing freely at the surface. The scientists think Kepler 62-f is a rocky planet like our own.

Two Promising Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years From Earth

Dennis Overbye - New York Times

Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear capable of supporting life and that orbit a star 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra. They are the two outermost of five worlds circling a yellowish star slightly smaller and dimmer than our Sun, heretofore anonymous and now destined to be known in the cosmic history books as Kepler 62, after NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which discovered them. These planets are roughly half again as large as Earth and are presumably balls of rock, perhaps covered by oceans with humid, cloudy skies, although that is at best a highly educated guess.

Kepler detects three 'super-Earths' in stars' habitable zones

Eryn Brown - Los Angeles Times

NASA scientists announced Thursday that the Kepler mission had confirmed finding three planets, slightly larger than our own Earth, orbiting in their stars' so-called habitable zones -- that "Goldilocks" region where temperatures are not too hot and not too cold. Researchers don't know for sure, but the planets' sizes and proximity to their stars mean that they could be rocky and could have liquid water, two attributes thought necessary for a planet to harbor life. What is certain, the scientists said during a press conference Thursday, is that the discoveries mark yet another step forward in the space agency's quest to find an Earth-sized planet in a star's habitable zone. "We're not quite there, but we're pushing toward it," said Thomas Barclay, a Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma.

3 planets discovered with right size, location for life

Dan Vergano - USA Today

NASA's planet-hunting telescope discovered three planets that seem like ideal places for some sort of life to flourish. They are at a distance that could allow for water, a key ingredient for life. Earth is looking a little less lonely after NASA astronomers reported Thursday the discovery of three more Earth-sized worlds orbiting nearby stars in ocean-friendly orbits. Astronomers have spotted more than 800 planets orbiting nearby stars in recent decades, but only a handful have been Earth-sized, "Goldilocks" worlds, not too hot and not too cold for water. Astronomers consider water an essential ingredient for the possibility of life on other planets.

NASA announces discovery of most interesting planetary system outside our own
Meet Kepler 62, a system of five planets circling a red star, 1,200 light years away

Alexis Madrigal - The Atlantic

The Kepler Space Telescope has been in orbit looking for planets around other stars since 2009, and it's started to find some startlingly interesting solar systems out there. Today, the Kepler team announced the discovery of star system Kepler 62, a group of five planets circling a red star, two of which may be capable of supporting life. That doubles the number of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone that Kepler has confirmed in the cosmos. And they're the smallest, and therefore closest to Earth size, that astronomers have detected. The system is 1,200 light years away. This is remarkably exciting. Not only do we know about two more Earth-like planets out there, but they're in the same solar system! That sent at least one scientist into the kind of reverie that I've been having since I heard the news.

Water Worlds: Has NASA Found Mirror Earths?

Michael Lemonick - Time

The search for Earthlike, habitable planets beyond the Sun has been something like a boulder rolling downhill ever since the Kepler space telescope went into orbit in 2009. Before that, ground-based astronomers had been finding so-called exoplanets one or two at a time, here and there in the cosmos, and pretty much all of them were far too large to be hospitable, or much close to the fires of their parent stars, or, usually, both. But ever since Kepler soared into space and turned its relentless, unblinking eye on a single patch of stars and never looked away, it began notching discoveries at an ever-accelerating pace, finding more planets—and more nearly Earthlike ones—all the time. What's more, it's finding them in the so-called habitable zone, just the right distance from their stars to allow life-sustaining liquid water to exist.

Kepler telescope spies 'most Earth-like' worlds to date

Jonathan Amos - BBC News

The search for a far-off twin of Earth has turned up two of the most intriguing candidates yet. Scientists say these new worlds are the right size and distance from their parent star, so that you might expect to find liquid water on their surface. It is impossible to know for sure. Being 1,200 light-years away, they are beyond detailed inspection by current telescope technology. But researchers tell Science magazine, they are an exciting discovery.

Discovered!
Most Earth-like alien planet & 2 other possibly habitable worlds

Mike Wall - Space.com

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered three exoplanets that may be capable of supporting life, and one of them is perhaps the most Earth-like alien world spotted to date, scientists announced Thursday. That most intriguing one is called Kepler-62f, a rocky world just 1.4 times bigger than Earth that circles a star smaller and dimmer than the sun. Kepler-62f's newfound neighbor, Kepler-62e, is just 1.6 times larger than Earth, making the pair among the smallest exoplanets yet found in their star's habitable zone — the just-right range of distances where liquid water can exist on a world's surface.

It's Time for Next Phase in Search for Alien Life, Scientists Say

Mike Wall - Space.com

With more and more Earth-like alien planets being discovered around the galaxy, humanity should now start planning out the next steps in its hunt for far-flung alien life, researchers say. On Thursday, scientists announced the discovery of three more potentially habitable exoplanets — Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c — further suggesting that the cosmos is jam-packed with worlds capable of supporting life as we know it. So the time is right to get the ball rolling beyond mere discovery to the detailed study and characterization of promising alien planets, researchers said — a task that will require new and more powerful instruments.

What Might Alien Life Look Like on New 'Water World' Planets?

Mike Wall - Space.com

Two newly discovered alien planets might be water worlds whose global oceans are teeming with life, scientists say. The existence of the distant exoplanets, called Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, was unveiled during a NASA press conference Thursday. The two worlds are perhaps the most promising life-hosting candidates yet found beyond our solar system, their discoverers said. Computer models suggest both planets are covered by uninterrupted oceans, which could theoretically support a wealth of aquatic lifeforms. "Look at our own ocean — it is just absolutely full of life," said Bill Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., leader of the team that discovered the two exoplanets. "We think, in fact, life [on Earth] might have begun there."

UGA goes to space, has planetary system named after it

Urvaksh Karkaria - Atlanta Business Chronicle

The University of Georgia apparently is the world's first university to have a planetary system named after it. The Kepler mission, NASA's first mission capable of finding earth-size planets, confirmed in 2012 the existence of three new planets in the system known as Kepler-37. This year, NASA authorized the nickname designation of this planetary system as UGA-1785.
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COMPLETE STORIES

International Space Station to get 787-style batteries

Paul Marks - New Scientist

NASA is pressing ahead with a plan to install lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station (ISS), New Scientist has learned. The batteries are similar to those used on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner aircraft, all 50 of which have been taken out of commercial service worldwide since January following battery fires on two planes. NASA says that lithium-ion cells offer compelling benefits, and it is confident that any safety issues can be overcome.

The agency intends to use batteries sourced from GS Yuasa, based in Kyoto, Japan, which also makes lithium batteries for Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes. Boeing has modified the aircraft batteries following the fires, but the new design has yet to gain safety certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

NASA is going ahead because, it says, "proper design" of the battery packs will let it take advantage of the lightness and extra power delivered by lithium-ion technology – which is easily better than the current nickel metal-hydride batteries used on the ISS.

"The benefits of [lithium's] higher power density are too compelling to ignore," says NASA spokesman Josh Byerly at the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston, Texas. He says the technology would allow launch payloads to be halved. "With space launch costs being extremely high, one can see the benefit in this approach."

Thermal runaway

The Boeing 787 battery packs contained eight lithium-ion cells made by GS Yuasa and assembled by aerospace contractor Thales, a multinational headquartered in France. Boeing says overheating in one cell vented heat to neighbouring cells and caused them to overheat also, an effect known as thermal runaway. One battery caught fire in a jet on the ground at Boston Logan airport in the US while another melted down in flight, causing an emergency landing and evacuation in Japan.

Boeing has redesigned the battery pack to improve issues such as the physical and thermal isolation of the cells and test-flew it earlier this month. But since what exactly started the fire in the lithium cells has not been precisely identified, the FAA and US National Transportation Safety Board are still deliberating over a solution.

Boeing is also the lead contractor on the ISS. NASA says it is working with it, and with its battery-assembling subcontractor Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, to do "everything possible to assure that a hazard is mitigated to the maximum possible extent – in this case, that conditions that could cause a cell runaway are designed out of the system and that safety controls are available to maintain the cells within allowable limits," says Byerly.

The design and testing will also ensure, he says, that if a hazardous event does occur, "it is contained and does not propagate into an uncontrolled event".

Near-vacuum

NASA says the situation on the ISS is very different to an aircraft because the batteries are installed outside the pressurised crew modules on a structural joist called a truss.

"In the near-vacuum of low-Earth orbit, while a cell failure resulting in a runaway thermal event would provide its own fuel and oxidiser, with proper design there is nothing available to propagate such an event beyond a single cell, let alone beyond a battery assembly," Byerly says.

What would happen to the space station if an entire battery overheated? "I don't want to get into hypothetical situations," Byerly says. "There is minimal risk."

Antares launch delayed to Saturday

William Harwood - CBS News

Running two days late because of a minor last-minute technical glitch, Orbital Sciences managers decided Thursday to delay the maiden flight of the company's new Antares rocket one more day to Saturday because of expected bad weather, company officials said.

The 133-foot-tall Antares rocket, built to boost unmanned space station cargo ships into orbit, now is targeted for liftoff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Island, Va., facility during a window that opens at 5 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Saturday. The weather is expected to "improve significantly," according to a company update.

Orbital got within 12 minutes of launch Wednesday only to call off the countdown after engineers spotted a data cable that had pulled loose from the rocket's second stage. Frank Culbertson, an Orbital vice president and Antares mission manager, said the issue was relatively easy to resolve and launch was tentatively rescheduled for Friday.

But forecasters said conditions were expected to deteriorate and with high winds and thick clouds expected, Orbital managers decided Thursday to delay the test flight one more day.

The Antares is the most powerful booster in Orbital's inventory and the largest rocket ever built for launch from the MARS/Wallops complex. NASA is counting on the new rocket to help ensure steady delivery of supplies and components to the International Space Station in the wake of the shuttle's retirement.

For the rocket's initial test flight, a heavily instrumented mockup of the company's Cygnus cargo ship is mounted in a protective nose cone. Assuming the test flight goes well, Orbital plans to launch a real Cygnus atop an Antares in mid June to deliver about a ton of supplies and equipment to the space station.

Antares vs. Falcon 9: How the two rockets ferrying NASA's cargo differ

Pete Spotts – Christian Science Monitor

Glistening white and standing 130 feet tall, the second of two commercial rockets NASA is relying on to ferry cargo to the International Space Station is set for its first test flight at 5 p.m. EDT Saturday.

If all goes well, the Antares rocket, built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp., will join Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s (SpaceX) Falcon 9 as replacements for the space shuttles that carried cargo to and from the ISS. The Falcon 9 and its Dragon cargo capsule already have completed two formal resupply missions to the station.

"We did come late to this activity," acknowledges Frank Culbertson, a former NASA astronaut and now an executive vice president at Orbital Sciences. The company signed on to NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program about 1-1/2 years after the program began, after NASA dropped one of the two initial participants.

"We've been playing catch-up, but we've about caught up. By the end of next year, we should have another four or five cargo missions under our belt," he adds.

NASA's initial choice of two companies for the COTS program involved aerospace upstarts born within a year of each other. Now, the program has paired a grizzled spaceflight veteran with a precocious tweenager.

Orbital Sciences has been building satellites and building and launching rockets for more than 30 years. SpaceX was founded in 2002.

Their approaches to designing and building their rockets are markedly different.

SpaceX has prided itself on designing and building its hardware in-house, beginning with its two-stage, liquid-fueled Falcon 1 rocket. The Falcon 1, with a single engine in its first stage, had teething problems. First launched in March 2006, the rocket's initial three missions failed to deliver anything to orbit. After a fourth, successful test that put a dummy payload into low-earth orbit, the Falcon 1 went on to loft a Malaysian remote-sensing satellite a year later, only to be retired as SpaceX focused on its workhorse, the Falcon 9.

Nearly 200 feet tall, the Falcon 9 boasts nine main engines and can loft much heavier payloads than its predecessor. Sometime this year, the company plans to test a third rocket, the Falcon Heavy – in effect three Falcon 9s strapped side by side, with the center booster topped with a second stage and a payload. The company bills the Falcon Heavy as the most powerful rocket the US has seen since the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket in the 1960s and '70s.

The company's ultimate quest is to develop reusable rockets, in addition to the reusable capsule it has built to carry cargo and eventually humans. SpaceX is testing a propulsion system that will allow a rocket booster to land vertically.

Last month, the propulsion system on a four-legged test frame lofted the frame and a dummy rocket 263 feet in the air, held that height for just over 30 seconds, then gradually eased back to Earth for a landing. At launch, a full-size manikin dressed to look like Johnny Cash stood on the frame and survived the round trip standing up.

Orbital Sciences, on the other hand, has built its Antares rocket largely from hardware that already has been space tested, explains Lennard Fisk, a professor of space science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a member of Orbital Sciences' board of directors.

The company turned to Ukraine's Yuzhnoye Design Bureau to help with the tanks, pumps, and plumbing needed to support Antares's two liquid-fuel motors – themselves built in the former Soviet Union but modified for Antares by a US rocket-motor company. Yuzhnoye builds Russia's Zenit rockets.

The second stage is powered by a solid-fuel motor built by the company that produced the solid-fuel boosters for the space shuttle.

Orbital Sciences' progress has not been without hiccups.

During launches for NASA in 2009 and 2011, the sleek shell, or faring, that the company uses to protect a payload while the rocket rises through the atmosphere failed to split open, preventing the satellites from reaching orbit. It has since modified the faring, which encase a dummy payload perched atop Antares.

In addition, during a test in 2011, one of the engines caught fire during a test. The US company that modified them for Orbital Sciences, Aerojet, repaired the defect. The motor has passed subsequent "hot fire" tests in January and February.

The program also experienced delays as technicians coped with the challenges of installing and testing new hardware designed to handle frigid liquid fuel at the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island in Virginia. Up to this point, the spaceport and the adjacent Wallops Island Fight Center, which NASA runs, had lofted solid-fuel rockets.

Saturday, NASA and Orbital will test the fruits of their labor.

"When we first started this program six years ago, there was no launch pad and no rocket" at the spaceport, said Phil McAlister, NASA's commercial-spaceflight development director during a prelaunch briefing. "I'm very much looking forward to the day where we have regular cargo resupply runs to the International Space Station. Hopefully we'll see that very soon."

Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket launch delayed until Saturday

James Dean - Florida Today

Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to try again at 5 p.m. Saturday to launch its Antares rocket for the first time.

The rocket would have been ready for the test flight Friday, but the weather forecast was poor at the state's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island in Virginia.

Conditions are expected to improve significantly Saturday and Sunday.

Dulles, Va.-based Orbital said only "small adjustments" were needed to fix the problem that scrubbed the first Antares launch attempt with 12 minutes left in Wednesday's countdown, when a data cable disconnected prematurely from the rocket's upper stage.

The cable was attached to device used to raise the rocket on the pad and hold umbilical lines, and didn't have enough slack when a slight hydraulic movement caused the device to shift unexpectedly.

"The good news is that this is a simple adjustment to the external support systems," said Frank Culbertson, Orbital's executive vice president and mission director for the Antares test flight.

Adjustments were made today to both the hydraulics and the data cable.

Orbital developed the medium-class Antares to launch cargo resupply runs to the International Space Station.

The test flight from a newly constructed launch pad will ensure that ground and rocket systems are ready to launch a Cygnus cargo spacecraft on a demonstration flight to the station, tentatively planned in June.

If the tests go well, Orbital would be cleared to fly the first of eight resupply missions under a $1.9 billion NASA contract.

Weather forecast leads to another delay for first Antares rocket launch

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Orbital Sciences Corp. is postponing the maiden launch of its two-stage Antares rocket until Saturday at the earliest, due to an unfavorable weather forecast for Friday.

The Antares rocket was originally due to blast off Thursday from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va., and go on an orbital test flight in preparation for cargo trips to the International Space Station. That first launch attempt was aborted with 12 minutes to go in the countdown, because an umbilical data cable was unplugged prematurely from the rocket's upper stage.

Orbital determined that the cable was pulled out because of a "slight hydraulic movement" of a launch pad structure. The company also said there wasn't enough slack in the cable. "Neither issue alone would have caused the umbilical disconnect, however, the combination resulted in the anomaly," Orbital said in a mission update on Thursday. Small adjustments were made to the launch pad equipment to fix the problem, and the launch team started making preparations for liftoff on Friday.

Later Thursday, Orbital said weather conditions at the Virginia pad were expected to deteriorate on Friday and then improve significantly. The launch team decided to wait out Friday's weather and aim for launch at 5 p.m. ET Saturday. Sunday would serve as a backup launch opportunity.

The Antares is due to launch a dummy payload into orbit as a rehearsal for future flights that would send robotic Cygnus cargo carriers to the space station. If Orbital's test flights are successful, the Virginia-based company could begin cargo runs under the terms of an eight-mission, $1.9 billion resupply contract with NASA. California-based SpaceX is already flying its Dragon cargo capsules to and from the space station under a separate 12-mission, $1.6 billion contract.

NASA struck deals with Orbital and SpaceX to provide U.S.-based cargo transfer capability in the wake of the space shuttle fleet's retirement in 2011. The space agency is also working with SpaceX and two other companies, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp., to develop crew-capable spaceships for space station trips. Yet another NASA program is aimed at creating a new heavy-lift rocket and Orion crew vehicle for journeys beyond low Earth orbit.

Antares rocket launch reset for Saturday evening

Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com

Launch managers have elected to bypass a launch opportunity Friday and schedule another attempt to launch the Antares test flight Saturday at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT).

Engineers have identified the cause of the problem that caused the scrub of Wednesday's launch attempt.

"Flight controllers saw that an umbilical providing data, which connects the Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) to the upper stage of the Antares rocket, became disconnected prior to the planned disconnect time," Orbital Sciences said in a statement. "The team determined the cause was a combination of slight hydraulic movement of the TEL and not enough slack left in the umbilical to allow for any additional or unplanned movement. Neither issue alone would have caused the umbilical disconnect, however, the combination resulted in the anomaly. Small adjustments are being made early today to both the hydraulics on the TEL and to the umbilical."

The umbilical provides a data link between the ground and the rocket's flight computer.

"he good news is that this is a simple adjustment to the external support systems," said Frank Culbertson, Orbital's executive vice president and mission director for the Antares test flight. "Given that this is a first run for the rocket and the first time use of a new launch facility, the fact that all systems were performing as planned while the team proceeded through the pre-launch checklists is very encouraging. It speaks volumes about the quality of the work done by this team and our partners."

The weather forecast for Saturday calls for an 85 percent chance of acceptable conditions. A cold front is expected to bring storms and windy weather to Virginia's Eastern Shore on Friday, but the inclement weather should clear out in time for Saturday evening's three-hour launch window opening at 5 p.m. EDT.

The only slight concerns for Saturday are low and thick clouds and ground winds.

"Weather conditions deteriorate on Friday, April 19, but improve significantly over the next two days increasing the chances for acceptable conditions at launch time," Orbital Sciences said in a statement. "This also allows the Antares launch team a day of rest before back-to-back opportunities on Saturday, April 20 and Sunday, April 21."

Really? Bum Ethernet Cable Scrubs Rocket Launch. Sigh

Jason Paur - Wired.com

There's a reason "rocket science" is a cliche. It's really, really hard to pull off a launch, and veteran rocket scientists barely raise an eyebrow when it doesn't happen. The equipment is massively complex. The liquid fuels are dangerous. And the timing involved in getting it all to work is measured in fractions of a second.

Despite this, and after spending hundreds of millions of dollars designing, engineering, building and testing everything that goes into making a rocket, Orbital Sciences' Antares performed perfectly. Instead, yesterday's flight was undone by the simplest of issues, the ol' ethernet-cable-getting-yanked-out-of-the-rocket problem.

When the data cable — the umbilical, in aerospeak — got pulled 12 minutes before launch, it did more than interrupt the finale of House of Cards. The engineers at mission control lost all ability to communicate with the flight computer — the brains of the rocket.

That was it. That was all it took to bring months of work and millions of dollars in R&D to a screeching halt. It wasn't a small misbehaving purge valve deep in the engine, or a faulty sensor, or a false alarm about hydrogen gas accumulating where it shouldn't. There are a myriad of extremely technical reasons the call can be made to scrub a launch, and sometimes they're pretty damned mundane.

"It was only the ethernet that pulled prematurely," Orbital's Frank Culbertson said in a debrief with reporters. "The team saw it immediately and started troubleshooting to see if it was something that could be worked around. And then finally realized, we just don't have comm, we can't proceed, so we scrubbed at that point."

It turns out the problem was slight hydraulic movement of the transport erector launcher that raises and supports the rocket, coupled with insufficient slack in the cord to account the unplanned movement. The company says neither issue alone would have caused the umbilical disconnect, but "the combination resulted in the anomaly." It is easily fixed by adjusting the apparatus that supports the rocket before launch.

A veteran of multiple space shuttle flights himself — including several scrubbed launches — Culbertson said there's a moment of disappointment that washes over the team when something like that happens.

"People say things like, 'Oh darn, heck…' things like that," he added with a smile. "And then you just move on because you have a checklist to do, and figure out, first of all, what went wrong?"

The former astronaut said it's clear in a video the team analyzed that the cable did indeed pop out, but it was not clear why. Eight individual cables connect to the second stage where the avionics are located, providing communications and power. It looks a bit "like the back of your stereo has all these cords coming off of it." This explanation made everybody's stereo seem excessively impressive.

Each of the eight cables has an aerospace industry-standard collar connector that locks them in place. And each of those collars has a lanyard attached, so when it's time to launch, the cable releases as the rocket lifts off.

The Antares team spent about four hours Wednesday night defueling the rocket and replacing components that must be replaced after any scrubbed launch. They also are examining the ethernet cable and connector to determine what caused the premature detachment. But they're not going to try to launch today. Because the Orbital team did not immediately know what caused the problem and because of crew rest requirements (you don't want sleepy engineers working on rockets), they're awaiting the next launch opportunity, Friday. But the weather for Friday isn't looking good, with only a 20 percent chance of favorable weather.

Sometimes rocket science isn't rocket science.

New Private Rocket Antares: 5 Surprising Facts

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

A new private rocket is set to launch into space for the first time today (April 17), potentially marking a leap forward for American commercial spaceflight.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Antares rocket is slated to blast off from Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) located at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), helping pave the way for eventual cargo missions to the International Space Station.

Orbital signed a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to fly eight unmanned supply missions using Antares and the company's robotic Cygnus spacecraft. Cygnus and Antares could be launched together on a demonstration mission to the space station as early as June, company officials say.

Here are five things you might not have known about Antares:

Antares' engines were made for the moon

The Antares rocket's first stage uses 2 Aerojet AJ26 rocket engines fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene (RP-1). The AJ26 is based on the NK-33 engine, which was originally developed to launch Russia's giant N-1 moon rocket in the 1960s.

N-1 was the Soviet answer to America's Saturn V rocket, used to launch astronauts to the moon during the space agency's Apollo program. The Soviet heavy-lifting rocket, however, was never launched successfully.

It is the largest rocket ever to launch from Virginia

Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore has traditionally been NASA's launching ground for small sounding rockets and high-altitude balloon missions, but Antares' launch from MARS is helping broaden the site's scope.

Engineers refurbished an old launch pad to accommodate Antares, whose launch today is perhaps the highest-profile liftoff from Wallops since its establishment in 1945. Most big manned and unmanned American missions have historically been run from Florida's Cape Canaveral, including the space station cargo launches of Orbital's competitor, SpaceX.

Weather permitting, today's Antares launch could be seen as far south as Charleston, S.C. and as far north as Portland, Maine. The rocket should be visible as a bright streak of light in Washington, D.C., assuming clouds doesn't get in the way.

Antares' name has a long space legacy

The rocket's name comes from a long cosmic legacy.

"Antares" is the name of a red supergiant star in the constellation Scorpius. It's one of the largest stars ever found, with a diameter several hundred times that of the sun. The star is about 600 light-years from Earth, and is among the top 20 brightest stars in the night sky.

The Apollo Lunar Module used during the Apollo 14 mission was also named "Antares." The module brought a two-person crew down to the surface of the moon in 1971, making the "most precise landing to date," according to NASA reports.

Orbital Sciences is a key player in missile defense

The company that developed Antares has also executed about 50 major launches for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the Air Force and the Navy to create a robust missile defense system in the United States.

Orbital Sciences creates target vehicles used in simulations to test the missile defense systems. The firm also manufactures "interceptor boosters" that can cut off possible missile launches aimed at the country.

This test flight will deliver tiny satellites into orbit

The Cygnus mass simulator being flown on Antares today will deploy a few tiny satellites for a commercial customer and NASA before burning up harmlessly in the Earth's atmosphere.

The satellite payload includes the Dove-1 nanosatellite for a commercial client and two versions of NASA Ames Research Center's PhoneSats, which are about the size of a coffee cup.

What happens when you wring out a washcloth in zero-G? Now we know

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

We've recently been reminded about the problems posed by zero-G poop and weightless weeping, but here's a real puzzler for zero-G hygiene: What happens to the water when you wring out a washcloth on the International Space Station? That's the question addressed in Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's latest silly science experiment — and the answer might not be what you expect.

This experiment takes the prize ... literally: It was designed by Kendra Lemke and Meredith Faulkner, two 10th-graders at Lockview High School in Fall River, Nova Scotia, and entered in a science contest sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency. A panel of judges selected the "Ring It Out" demonstration as the contest's winner.

Would the water spray out in a hail of fast-moving droplets, or blurp out in slow-moving globs? Actually, the students hypothesized that the water would just stay on the washcloth — and Hadfield proved them correct during Tuesday's live demonstration.

"The experiment worked beautifully," Hadfield said. "The answer to the question is, the water squeezes out of the cloth, and then because of the surface tension of the water, it actually runs along the surface of the cloth and then up into my hand, almost like you had gel on your hand, and it'll just stay there. Wonderful moisturizer on my hands."

It's one thing to read those observations, and quite another to see them on video.

Women have advantage in Astronaut Hall of Fame's Class of 2013
Collins, Dunbar, Brown honored in Saturday ceremony

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

Eileen Collins is an accomplished aviator and astronaut, the first woman to pilot a space shuttle, the first women to command a U.S. space mission and one of the first women to graduate from U.S. Air Force test pilot school.

But if you had known her in high school, you never would have guessed the shy bookworm would climb so high.

"I always tell people if there was a high school award for the person least likely to be an astronaut, it would have been me," Collins said. "I had no idea I would be an astronaut, much less in the hall of fame."

Collins, 56, will be inducted Saturday into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame along with fellow fliers Curt Brown and Bonnie Dunbar.

The 2013 Hall of Fame class is the first to include two women, and the first in which women outnumber men.

Brown, Collins and Dunbar will join the ranks of Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Sally Ride, Alan Shepard, Jim Lovell and John Young during a 2 p.m. ceremony Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

More than 30 Hall of Fame astronauts will be on hand to welcome the new inductees. Among those expected: moonwalkers Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and Charlie Duke; veteran shuttle pilot and mission commander Robert Crippen.

Brown, 57, flew on six shuttle missions. He commanded Discovery on a 1998 flight that returned legendary Mercury astronaut John Glenn to space at age 77, some 36 years after Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.

A retired Air Force colonel, Brown also commanded the third of five missions to service NASA's flagship Hubble Space Telescope. He piloted a Japanese Spacelab mission, an atmospheric research flight, and a technology demonstration mission to deploy a huge inflatable antenna.

Dunbar, 64, flew on five shuttle missions, including a German Spacelab mission in 1985 that was the only flight to carry a crew of eight.

Dunbar also served as a payload commander on a mission that paved the way to research now being done on the International Space Station. And she flew on the first and eighth of nine shuttle missions to Mir.

Collins, 56, a retired Air Force colonel, piloted Discovery on a 1995 mission to rendezvous and make a close approach to the Mir space station, and then the sixth shuttle-Mir docking mission in 1997.

In 1999, Collins commanded Columbia on a mission to deploy one of NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

Then in 2005, Collins commanded the crew on the first post-Columbia test flight, a mission that returned the United States to human space exploration after a 2.5-year hiatus.

Her skyrocketing career began in Elmira, N.Y., home of the National Soaring Museum on Harris Hill, part of a ridge system that rises 700 feet above the Chemung Valley.

Harris Hill is known for glider flights. As a kid, during summer soaring season, Collins would watch glider pilots fly with an eye toward doing the same some day.

A natural talent for mathematics and science, Collins went to Elmira Free Academy, graduated in 1974, and then went on to Corning Community College, where she earned a two-year scholarship to Syracuse University.

Along the way, Collins got a pilot's license, a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from Syracuse, and admission to U.S. Air Force pilot training.

"So things happened pretty rapidly between, I would say, high school and the end of my four years of college," Collins said.

Time flies, too. Collins now is retired from NASA and the nation's shuttle fleet no longer is flying. And for Collins, the next phase of U.S. human spaceflight — expeditions beyond Earth orbit — cannot come along soon enough.

"I am very impatient. I think a lot of people are very impatient. Some people believe there is no mission defined. I believe there is a mission defined. I think it needs to be refined," she said, adding: "I think we certainly could move faster."

2013 Inductees

Curt Brown

Six shuttle missions: STS-47 in September 1992; STS-66 in November 1994; STS-77 in May 1996; STS-85 in August 1997; STS-95 in October/November 1998; and STS-103 in December 1999.

Flew aboard Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, logging 1,383 hours in space.

Commanded NASA's "John Glenn mission" -- the legendary Mercury astronaut's return to space at age 77 in 1998.

Eileen Collins

Four shuttle missions: STS-63 in February 1995; STS-84 in May 1997; STS-93 in July 1999 and STS-114 in July/August 2005.

Flew aboard Discovery, Atlantis and Columbia, logging 872 hours in space.

Bonnie Dunbar

Five shuttle missions: STS 61-A in October/November 1985; STS-32 in January 1990; STS-50 in June/July 1992; STS-71 in June/July 1995; and STS-89 in January 1998.

Flew aboard Challenger, Columbia, Atlantis and Endeavour, logging 1,208 hours in space.

Served as president and CEO of the Seattle Museum of Flight, now leads a new STEM education center at the University of Houston.

MEANWHILE, FROM KEPLER 448 MILES UP…

Kepler Telescope Spots 3 New Planets In The 'Goldilocks Zone'

Joe Palca - National Public Radio

Astronomers have found three planets orbiting far-off stars that are close to Earth-sized and in the "habitable zone": a distance from their suns that makes the planets' surfaces neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

One of the three planets orbits a star with the prosaic name Kepler-69.

"Kepler-69 is a sun-like star," says Thomas Barclay, a research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute who uses the Kepler space telescope, which is on a mission to search for Earth-like planets. It finds planets by looking for tiny dips in the light coming from a star. The dips come when a planet passes in front of a star. By measuring the interval between dips, astronomers can figure out how long it takes a planet to orbit its star.

The planet around Kepler-69 is "around 70 percent bigger than Earth, so what we call super-Earth-sized," says Barclay. "This represents the first super-Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun."

Twenty five years ago, if you had asked astronomers if there were planets around other stars, they'd probably say maybe, but they'd admit they were just speculating.

Boy, have times changed. In the past two decades, using some innovative measurement techniques, astronomers have confirmed the existence of lots of planets — 697, in fact — according to the Exoplanet Orbit Database.

"Back in the good old days, you'd find one or two crappy, Jupiter-like planets, and you'd be on the cover of Time magazine. But those days are long gone," says Paul Butler, a planet hunter at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Most new planets barely elicit a yawn these days.

The Kepler mission is partly to blame for that. The spacecraft, which launched in 2009, has been wildly successful, having found more than 100 planets, most of which have been the nasty Jupiter-sized planets Butler talks about. But the three planets being announced today are different.

In addition to the one orbiting Kepler-69, there are two around Kepler-62 that are even closer to Earth-sized. Kepler-62 is a dimmer star than Kepler-69, so the planets' orbits must be closer to the star to keep them in the habitable zone. The planets around Kepler-62 are described in the online edition of the journal Science.

William Borucki, an astronomer with the NASA Ames Research Center and the principal investigator for Kepler, says the mission's goal is to find how many Earth twins are out there.

"If they're frequent, then there may be lots of life throughout the galaxy," says Borucki. "They may just be waiting for us to call and say, 'Hello, we'd like to join the club.' Or if we don't find any, the answer may be just the opposite. Maybe we're alone, there isn't anybody out there; there will never be a Star Trek because there's no place to go to."

And that's a sobering thought.

Kepler closing in on Earth-like planets

William Harwood - CBS News

Slowly but surely closing in on an answer to a fundamental question -- how common are Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars? -- NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered the smallest worlds yet found orbiting in or near the habitable zones of two distant suns, researchers announced Thursday.

While all three planets are larger than Earth, they are the closest analogues yet found orbiting in the region around their parent stars where water could exist as a liquid, a critical necessity for the evolution of life as it is currently understood.

"We are on the verge of the discovery of so many very exciting planets that, in turn, will tell us so much more about how rocky planets work, how they can be diverse and we will then learn something as well for our own Earth," Lisa Kaltenegger a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told reporters.

In a statement, John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for space science, said "the discovery of these rocky planets in the habitable zone brings us a bit closer to finding a place like home."

"It is only a matter of time before we know if the galaxy is home to a multitude of planets like Earth, or if we are a rarity," he said.

The hunt for exoplanets is one of the hottest fields of astronomical research with international teams using ground-based telescopes and spacecraft to search for the subtle dimming of a star's light or the slight wobble that occurs as unseen planets swing around in their orbits.

Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope is equipped with a 95-megapixel camera that that continually monitors the light from more than 150,000 stars in a patch of sky in the constellation Lyra.

Planets passing in front of targeted stars cause a very slight, periodic dimming. By timing repeated cycles, computer analysis can ferret out new worlds, including potential Earth-like planets orbiting in a star's habitable zone where water can exist as a liquid.

Prior to Thursday's announcement, NASA's Exoplanet Archive listed 844 confirmed planets orbiting 658 stars, including 128 solar systems hosting multiple planets. The Kepler spacecraft had discovered 115 confirmed planets and 2,740 planet candidates requiring additional observation and analysis.

Up to this point, Kepler had found just two planets in the habitable zones of their parent stars and both of them were considerably larger than Earth.

But the spacecraft's latest discoveries include seven confirmed planets in two solar systems, including the smallest worlds yet found in a star's habitable zone.

A star known as Kepler-62 hosts five known planets, including two that orbit in the habitable zone, while a star known as Kepler-69 hosts at least two worlds, including one on the inner edge of its habitable region.

Kepler-62, at a distance of 1,200 light years from Earth, is roughly two-thirds the size of the sun and only one-fifth as luminous. Two of its five planets -- Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f -- are so-called super-Earths with a radius of 1.6 and 1.4 times that of Earth respectively.

Kepler-62e orbits its sun every 122 days while Kepler-62f, just 40 percent larger than Earth, completes a year every 267 days.

"This appears to be the best example our team has found yet of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star," said Alan Boss, a Kepler researcher at the Carnegie Institution and a leading theorist in planetary evolution.

A star known as Kepler-69, located some 2,700 light years away, is 93 percent the size of the sun and 80 percent as luminous. It hosts two confirmed planets, Kepler-69c and Kepler-69b.

The former is 70 percent larger than Earth, but it orbits near the inner edge of the habitable zone, much like Venus in Earth's solar system, taking 242 days to complete a year. This is the smallest planet yet found in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

Kepler-69b is more than twice as large as Earth and orbits so close to its sun that it completes a year every 13 days.

While the two solar systems do not precisely mirror Earth's, they illustrate a trend in the Kepler data -- with more and more observations, astronomers should be able to identify smaller, more Earth-like planets to determine how rare, or common, they might be.

"We only know of one star that hosts a planet with life, the sun," Thomas Barclay, a Kepler researcher, said in a statement. "Finding a planet in the habitable zone around a star like our sun is a significant milestone toward finding truly Earth-like planets."

NASA sees distant planets that seem ideal for life

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

NASA's planet-hunting telescope has discovered two planets that seem like ideal places for some sort of life to flourish. And they are just the right size and in just the right place.

One is toasty, the other nippy.

The distant duo are the best candidates for habitable planets that astronomers have found so far, said William Borucki, the chief scientist for NASA's Kepler telescope. And it's got astronomers thinking that similar planets that are just about right for life - "Goldilocks planets" - might be common in the universe.

The discoveries, published online Thursday in the journal Science, mark a milestone in the search for planets where life could exist. In the four years that Kepler has been trailing Earth's orbit, the telescope has found 122 exoplanets - planets outside our solar system.

In the past, those planets haven't fit all the criteria that would make them right for life of any kind from microbes to man.

Many planets aren't in the habitable zone - where it's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water. And until now, the few found in that ideal zone, were just too big. Those are likely to be gas balls like Neptune and that's not suitable for life.

Similarly, any Earth-size planets weren't in the right place near their stars, Borucki said.

In the Goldilocks game of looking for other planets like ours, the new discoveries, called Kepler-62-e and Kepler-62-f are just right. And they are fraternal twins. They circle the same star, an orange dwarf, and are next to each other - closer together than Earth and its neighbor Mars.

The planets are slightly wider than Earth, but not too big. Kepler-62-e is a bit balmy, like a Hawaiian world and Kepler-62-f is a bit frosty, more Alaskan, Borucki said.

The pair is 1,200 light-years away; a light-year is almost 6 trillion miles.

"This is the first one where I'm thinking `Huh, Kepler-62-f really might have life on it'," said study co-author David Charbonneau of Harvard. "This is a very important barrier that's been crossed. Why wouldn't it have life?"

To make it warm enough for life the planet would need greenhouse gas trapping its star's heat because the star only gives off one-fifth the energy of our sun, but that's something that is likely to happen, Borucki said.

Both planets are tantalizing. The dozens of researchers who co-authored the study disagree on which one is better suited to life. Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Germany likes Kepler-62-e more because it's closer to the star and is warmer. She said it is probably "like Washington in May."

That planet is so close it may need clouds to cool off and it's more likely to be an all-water world, unlike any other in our solar system, Kaltenegger said. Astronomers cannot confirm that either planet has water, but based on other research, it's a good assumption, she said.

The planets circle a star that is 7 billion years old - about 2.5 billion years older than our sun. Kepler spots the planets as they go between Earth and their star ever so slightly, reducing the light from the star.

"If there's life at all on those planets, it must be very advanced" evolutionarily because the planets are so old, said Borucki.

On a watery planet, oceans are prime spots for life, including flying fish that could evolve into birds, Borucki said. And on the rocky planet, with a heavier gravity than Earth, life might look a tad different, he said.

In another study also published by some of the same authors in Astrophysical Journal, the astronomers found a different set of planets that are slightly bigger, but probably not gas giants, and circle a star that more resembles our sun. One of those planets is on edge of the habitable zone - maybe in, maybe out - and could be considered a potential third good place for a habitable zone, said Thomas Barclay of NASA's Ames Research Center, which runs the Kepler telescope.

All told, researchers announced seven new exoplanets on Thursday, upping the grand total found so far by Kepler and Earth-bound telescopes to about 850, according to NASA.

Pennsylvania State University professor James Kasting called the findings "a big discovery." Kasting and Sara Seager of MIT, who weren't part of the research, pointed out that Kepler's job is to look at one distant corner of the sky and to find what fraction of stars seemed to have the right sized planets in the habitable zone.

"This is HUGE," Seager wrote in an email. "Do you realize that as soon as Kepler could find close-to-Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, Kepler found it. Goldilocks planets must be everywhere."

Space telescope spots distant planets well placed for life

Irene Klotz - Reuters

Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope have found the best candidates yet for habitable worlds beyond the solar system, including a pair of potentially life-friendly planets orbiting the same star, officials said on Thursday.

The planets join a list of about 700 confirmed extra-solar planets discovered since 1995.

The new additions include a pair of planets orbiting a star called Kepler-62, located about 1,200 light years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-62's two outermost planets, both about 1.5 times the size of Earth, are located the right distance from their parent star for water - if any exists - to be liquid on the surface. Water is believed to be necessary for life.

"These two planets are our best candidates for planets that might be habitable, not just in the habitable zone," Kepler lead scientist William Borucki, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told reporters on a conference call.

Computer models indicate the two planets, designated Kepler-62e and 62f, likely are solid bodies comprised of rock, ice or a mix of rock and ice.

The pair have three sister planets that also circle Kepler-62, but those are too close their parent star and likely too hot for surface water.

The Kepler telescope measures slight dips in the amount of light coming from target stars that may be caused by planets passing by, or transiting, relative to the telescope's line of sight.

So far, the Kepler science team has more than 2,700 candidate planets.

Scientists also found two planets circling another Kepler target star, Kepler-69, located about 2,700 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km) in a year.

The innermost planet is about twice the size of Earth and orbits its parent star in just 13 days, too close for liquid surface water. The second planet, however, which is about 70 percent bigger than Earth, orbits about where Venus is located in the solar system, putting it on the edge of the star's so-called "habitable zone."

More powerful telescopes than Kepler will be needed to fish out more detail about whether the extrasolar planets do indeed have water.

"We're still progressing to find the first truly Earth-like worlds," said astronomer Thomas Barclay, with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, California.

The research is being published in Science and the Astrophysical Journal this week.

Kepler telescope spots two planets in life-friendly orbit

Joel Achenbach - Washington Post

The Washington Post Planet-hunting astronomers revealed Thursday that they'd found two tantalizing worlds, seemingly congenial to life as we know it, orbiting a star 1,200 light-years away.

Neither planet has been seen directly, and whether they actually harbor living things is speculative. Their presence has been inferred by the dimming of their parent star at regular intervals, as observed by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

Kepler 62-f is just a bit larger than Earth — 1.41 Earth radii, to be precise — and it's in the so-called Goldilocks position, orbiting the star (Kepler 62) at a distance where water could be splashing freely at the surface. The scientists think Kepler 62-f is a rocky planet like our own.

They also found Kepler 62-e, which is 1.6 times the radius of the Earth. It is closer to the parent star and warmer, but also within what is presumed to be the habitable zone. Scientists think the size of Kepler 62-e makes it a good candidate for being a water world, completely covered by ocean.

All told, the Kepler team revealed seven new planets in two planetary systems Thursday, publishing findings online in the journal Science and holding a news conference at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

"This is really cool," said Pete Worden, the director of NASA Ames.

The Kepler telescope was launched in 2009 and has found more than 100 planets to date. The ultimate goal of planet-hunting astronomers is to find a true Earth twin, a planet that is no larger than our own and in an Earth-like orbit. Kepler 62-f comes very close. The mass of the planet is unknown, but computer models suggest that it must be a rocky planet like our own, and not a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn or an ice world like Uranus or Neptune.

"We think that it may have significant land masses," Kepler lead scientist William J. Borucki said.

The first exoplanet — a planet outside our solar system — was found in 1995, and since then a frenzy of planet-hunting using a variety of techniques has produced hundreds of discoveries. Extrapolating from what has been observed so far, astronomers increasingly think that planets are commonplace in the universe, and that our galaxy alone could have billions of planets in life-friendly orbits.

To date, however, extraterrestrial life remains conjectural. No life has been found beyond Earth. Even if an Earth twin were found, the superficial resemblance would not mean that we'd found a planet that was actually inhabited by living things. As Borucki noted, "We don't know what life requires to get started."

The Kepler telescope, which circles the sun in an Earth-trailing orbit, looks for stars that dim in a regular pattern, which would suggest that a planet is passing between the star and the telescope. Several such regularly spaced occulations will tell the astronomers that they've got a real planet dimming that star and not some random fluctuation in starlight.

The amount that the star dims will also give the Kepler team a sense of the diameter of the planet involved. As with other techniques for planet-finding, the big, hot, Jupiter-size planets in close-in orbits have been the easiest to detect. Refinement of the search methods have let astronomers find smaller and smaller planets that are farther from their parent stars — like Kepler 62-e & 62-f.

Two Promising Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years From Earth

Dennis Overbye - New York Times

Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear capable of supporting life and that orbit a star 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra.

They are the two outermost of five worlds circling a yellowish star slightly smaller and dimmer than our Sun, heretofore anonymous and now destined to be known in the cosmic history books as Kepler 62, after NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which discovered them. These planets are roughly half again as large as Earth and are presumably balls of rock, perhaps covered by oceans with humid, cloudy skies, although that is at best a highly educated guess.

Nobody will probably ever know if anything lives on these planets, and the odds are that humans will travel there only in their faster-than-light dreams, but the news has sent astronomers into heavenly raptures. William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center, head of the Kepler project, described one of the new worlds as the best site for Life Out There yet found in Kepler's four-years-and-counting search for other Earths. He treated his team to pizza and beer on his own dime to celebrate the find (this being the age of sequestration). "It's a big deal," he said.

Looming brightly in each other's skies, the two planets circle their star at distances of 37 million and 65 million miles, about as far apart as Mercury and Venus in our solar system. Most significantly, their orbits place them both in the "Goldilocks" zone of lukewarm temperatures suitable for liquid water, the crucial ingredient for Life as We Know It.

Goldilocks would be so jealous.

Previous claims of Goldilocks planets with "just so" orbits snuggled up to red dwarf stars much dimmer and cooler than the Sun have had uncertainties in the size and mass and even the existence of these worlds, said David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, an exoplanet hunter and member of the Kepler team.

"This is the first planet that ticks both boxes," Dr. Charbonneau said, speaking of the outermost planet, Kepler 62f. "It's the right size and the right temperature." Kepler 62f is 40 percent bigger than Earth and smack in the middle of the habitable zone, with a 267-day year. In an interview, Mr. Borucki called it the best planet Kepler has found.

Its mate, known as Kepler 62e, is slightly larger — 60 percent bigger than Earth — and has a 122-day orbit, placing it on the inner edge of the Goldilocks zone. It is warmer but also probably habitable, astronomers said.

The Kepler 62 system resembles our own solar system, which also has two planets in the habitable zone: Earth — and Mars, which once had water and would still be habitable today if it were more massive and had been able to hang onto its primordial atmosphere.

The Kepler 62 planets continue a string of breakthroughs in the last two decades in which astronomers have gone from detecting the first known planets belonging to other stars, or exoplanets, broiling globs of gas bigger than Jupiter, to being able to discern smaller and smaller more moderate orbs — iceballs like Neptune and, now, bodies only a few times the mass of Earth, known technically as super-Earths. Size matters in planetary affairs because we can't live under the crushing pressure of gas clouds on a world like Jupiter. Life as We Know It requires solid ground and liquid water — a gentle terrestrial environment, in other words.

Kepler 62's newfound worlds are not quite small enough to be considered strict replicas of Earth, but the results have strengthened the already strong conviction among astronomers that the galaxy is littered with billions of Earth-size planets, perhaps as many as one per star, and that astronomers will soon find Earth 2.0, as they call it — our lost twin bathing in the rays of an alien sun.

"Kepler and other experiments are finding planets that remind us more and more of home," said Geoffrey Marcy, a longtime exoplanet hunter at the University of California, Berkeley, and Kepler team member. "It's an amazing moment in science. We haven't found Earth 2.0 yet, but we can taste it, smell it, right there on our technological fingertips."

A team of 60 authors, led by Mr. Borucki, reported the discovery of the Kepler 62 planets on Thursday in an article published online in the journal Science and at a news conference at Ames.

As if that weren't enough, a group led by Thomas Barclay of Ames and the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute also reported the discovery of a planet 1.7 times as big as Earth hovering on the inner, warmer edge of the Goldilocks zone of Kepler 69, a star almost identical to the Sun, 2,700 light-years distant. At the news conference, Dr. Barclay described the planet as perhaps a "Super-Venus." The group's paper was published on Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal.

And in another paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal, a group led by Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in Heidelberg, Germany, took the first stab at trying to model conditions on the Kepler 62 planets. That is a tough job because the system is too far away for astronomers to measure the masses of these planets, which would allow the densities and compositions of the planets to be pinned down, or to inspect and analyze their atmospheres with telescopes.

Scaling up from the properties of the Earth, Dr. Kaltenegger and her colleagues concluded that both of them were probably ocean worlds with humid, cloudy skies. Any life on them would probably be aquatic, she said, but "it might even be cooler life than we have here. Looking at the oceans, we find a lot of interesting life-forms there."

Dr. Kaltenegger said she envisioned the pair as a kind of Darwinian test tube and wondered in an e-mail if life would evolve on both worlds and, if so, "Would life evolve 'the same' way or would there be very different life?"

"This is huge for the overall life-elsewhere question," said Sara Seager, a planetary expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not part of the work.

Alan Boss, a planetary expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a member of the Kepler team, called the new results the capstone of the Kepler mission. "I would argue," he said in an e-mail, "that if this was all that we learned from Kepler, that the cost of this mission was justified."

Kepler, launched in March 2009, hunts planets by staring at 150,000 stars in a patch of Milky Way sky, monitoring their brightnesses and looking for blips caused when planets pass in front of their home stars. To date the spacecraft has identified 115 planets and has a list of 2,740 other candidates. (Over all, the world's astronomers now know of almost 1,000 exoplanets.)

But Kepler, which had its mission extended for four years last spring, is only now coming into its prime. A minimum of three blips is required to register a planet, and so planets like the Earth that take a year to make an orbit are only now coming into view in the Kepler data. Indeed, the new Kepler 62 planets each registered just three transits, as they are called.

But there is a hitch, Dr. Seager and others cautioned. Because the Kepler stars are all so far away — hundreds or thousands of light-years — and the planets we want to find are so small, astronomers will never be quite completely sure what any particular planet is made of or whether anything can or does live there.

In the case of Kepler 62, said Natalie Batalha of San Jose State University, a Kepler scientist, the astronomers had determined the composition of the new planets by comparison to three earlier objects that had similar sizes and turned out to be rocky.

"Mass by association," Dr. Batalha called it in an e-mail.

Which is fine if all you want is the statistics of the cosmos. As Dr. Seager pointed out, "Kepler was not designed to tell us which planet to go live on, only how common Earth-like planets are."

Kepler detects three 'super-Earths' in stars' habitable zones

Eryn Brown - Los Angeles Times

NASA scientists announced Thursday that the Kepler mission had confirmed finding three planets, slightly larger than our own Earth, orbiting in their stars' so-called habitable zones -- that "Goldilocks" region where temperatures are not too hot and not too cold.

Researchers don't know for sure, but the planets' sizes and proximity to their stars mean that they could be rocky and could have liquid water, two attributes thought necessary for a planet to harbor life. What is certain, the scientists said during a press conference Thursday, is that the discoveries mark yet another step forward in the space agency's quest to find an Earth-sized planet in a star's habitable zone.

"We're not quite there, but we're pushing toward it," said Thomas Barclay, a Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma.

"These are our best candidates for planets that might be habitable," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. and a longtime advocate for the mission.

Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has kept its telescope trained on a patch of of the Milky Way containing more than 150,000 stars, recording the tiny dips in light that result when a planet's orbit carries it between its star and the craft. Scientists on the ground (occasionally with the help of volunteer citizen scientists) then analyze the light curves in various ways to confirm that the dips do -- or don't -- correspond to distant planets.

The newly confirmed super-Earths orbit two different stars.

One planet of interest, Kepler-69c, is about 70% larger than Earth and orbits a star that is similar to our sun and is 2,000 light-years away, Barclay said Thursday. It lies on the inner edge of its star's habitable zone, and could be "more of a super-Venus than a super-Earth," he added -- in other words, very hot. Its discovery was published Thursday (subscription required) in the Astrophysical Journal.

The other two planets, known as Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, are also somewhat larger than Earth (60% and 40% larger, respectively) and are somewhat closer by, at 1,200 light-years away. Kepler-62e orbits the star Kepler-62 in 122 days and could be rocky or a "water world" unlike anything in our solar system, Borucki said.

Kepler-62f orbits Kepler-62 in 267 days and is thought to be rocky. The Kepler 62 planets were described in a paper published online Thursday (subscription required) by the journal Science.

There's a lot that the Kepler team doesn't know about the newly confirmed worlds, the scientists said. Because scientists have not been able to measure the masses of the planets they can't determine their composition in any direct manner, and instead must make inferences about their makeup based on previous observations of other worlds, including our own.

Because the Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler 69 are so far away, scientists don't expect to study their atmospheres up close. But in the future, the researchers said, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission should locate small planets closer to Earth, and its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) should be able to investigate those potentially habitable worlds in some detail, potentially learning exactly what makes a planet habitable and how life thrives.

"This is not just an academic exercise anymore," said Barclay. "We're finding planets to test our hypotheses."

3 planets discovered with right size, location for life

Dan Vergano - USA Today

NASA's planet-hunting telescope discovered three planets that seem like ideal places for some sort of life to flourish. They are at a distance that could allow for water, a key ingredient for life.

Earth is looking a little less lonely after NASA astronomers reported Thursday the discovery of three more Earth-sized worlds orbiting nearby stars in ocean-friendly orbits.

Astronomers have spotted more than 800 planets orbiting nearby stars in recent decades, but only a handful have been Earth-sized, "Goldilocks" worlds, not too hot and not too cold for water. Astronomers consider water an essential ingredient for the possibility of life on other planets.

The Kepler space telescope findings reported in the journal Science by a team led by William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., add to that total. The report finds that the star, Kepler-62 has two planets, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, orbiting in ocean-friendly orbits around the star.

"This appears to be the best example our team has found yet of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of a sun-like star," said team astrophysicist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington. Kepler-62 is close by astronomical standards at about 1,200 light years away (708,000 trillion miles). It's a star slightly smaller than our sun, so its "habitable zone" for planets is closer in. The two ocean-friendly planets have "years" of 122 days and 267 days — the time it takes to completely orbit the star — for that reason.

Another star spotted by Kepler, dubbed Kepler-69, appears to have a planet in the habitable zone. The planet, Kepler-69c, is 70% larger than Earth and circles its star once every 242 days, an orbit resembling Venus in our solar system.

"Kepler is really delivering. It is frankly amazing that we live at a time when we can talk about Earth-like planets around other stars," says MIT astronomer Sarah Seager, who was not on the discovery team. "The next stage is being able to really see what these planets are like."

The discovery team suggests that the Kepler-62 planets may be anything from solid to water-covered. A separate team of astronomers suggests the worlds are probably covered with water.

"They have endless oceans," said astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center in a statement on a related analysis of the two planets accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal. "There may be life there, but could it be technology-based like ours? Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity or fire for metallurgy."

Kepler, which spots planets by seeing the dip in starlight they cause during passes in front of their stars, can give only size estimates of planets, not determine their composition, Seager says. Future planet-observing satellites, such as the planned Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) announced this month by NASA for launch in 2017, should provide more information on such worlds. "What we are seeing with all these different orbits of these worlds is that planet formation is a pretty random process," Seager says. "They certainly don't all look like our solar system."

NASA announces discovery of most interesting planetary system outside our own
Meet Kepler 62, a system of five planets circling a red star, 1,200 light years away

Alexis Madrigal - The Atlantic

The Kepler Space Telescope has been in orbit looking for planets around other stars since 2009, and it's started to find some startlingly interesting solar systems out there.

Today, the Kepler team announced the discovery of star system Kepler 62, a group of five planets circling a red star, two of which may be capable of supporting life. That doubles the number of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone that Kepler has confirmed in the cosmos. And they're the smallest, and therefore closest to Earth size, that astronomers have detected. The system is 1,200 light years away.

This is remarkably exciting. Not only do we know about two more Earth-like planets out there, but they're in the same solar system! That sent at least one scientist into the kind of reverie that I've been having since I heard the news.

"Imagine looking through a telescope to see another world with life just a few million miles from your own, or having the capability to travel between them on regular basis," Kepler team member Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard told New Scientist. "I can't think of a more powerful motivation to become a space-faring society."

While scientists have found that our galaxy is teeming with planets, it takes longer to detect planets that take a long time to orbit their suns. That's because Kepler detects planets when they pass in front of their stars. If a planet takes a couple hundred Earth-days to go around its sun, the scientists need several years to gather several transits, as they're known.

NASA's Bill Borucki, the mission's principal scientific investigator and a tireless proponent of this misson for years, was understandably excited about the discoveries.

"The detection and confirmation of planets is an enormously collaborative effort of talent and resources, and requires expertise from across the scientific community to produce these tremendous results," Borucki said in a NASA release. "Kepler has brought a resurgence of astronomical discoveries and we are making excellent progress toward determining if planets like ours are the exception or the rule."

The search for planets like our own is one of the science's most exciting frontiers, and after years of waiting for the discovery of Earth-like planets, we're finally getting them. This one was published in the journal Science. It's also worth noting that Borucki's team announced another planetary system surrounding a star like our own that harbors one Earth-like planet. It was a big day for those awaiting news of other planets capable of supporting life.

Water Worlds: Has NASA Found Mirror Earths?

Michael Lemonick - Time

The search for Earthlike, habitable planets beyond the Sun has been something like a boulder rolling downhill ever since the Kepler space telescope went into orbit in 2009. Before that, ground-based astronomers had been finding so-called exoplanets one or two at a time, here and there in the cosmos, and pretty much all of them were far too large to be hospitable, or much close to the fires of their parent stars, or, usually, both.

But ever since Kepler soared into space and turned its relentless, unblinking eye on a single patch of stars and never looked away, it began notching discoveries at an ever-accelerating pace, finding more planets—and more nearly Earthlike ones—all the time. What's more, it's finding them in the so-called habitable zone, just the right distance from their stars to allow life-sustaining liquid water to exist.

Nobody quite imagined what the Kepler team has just announced, however. Writing in Nature, William Borucki, Kepler's principal scientist, along with dozens of collaborators, reports the discovery of not one, but two potentially life-sustaining planets, orbiting a star some 1,200 light-years away, in the constellation Lyra. One, named Kepler-62e, is about 60 percent larger than Earth, and lies at the inner, hotter edge of the habitable zone, where water might be awfully hot but still avoid boiling away. The second, Kepler 62f, is 40 percent larger than Earth and is more comfortably within the star's just-right region. This, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division at a press conference, "is really cool." In astronomer-speak, that's huge.

Borucki and the other Kepler scientists were quick to say they had no direct evidence that either planet actually has liquid water on its surface. All they know for sure is the planets' size, and their distance from the star: 33 million mi. (53 million km) out for the larger 62e; 65 million mi. (105 million km) for the smaller 62f.

In our solar system, that would make both planets too hot for water to stay liquid. But the star, Kepler 62, is only about two-thirds as large as the Sun, and significantly dimmer, so a planet can approach much closer and still be hospitable. Even so, it's not just water that matters; the atmosphere has to be just right too. "The outer [planet]," said Lisa Kaltenegger, who has joint appointments at Harvard and at Germany's Max Planck Institute of Astronomy, "would need a lot of greenhouse gases to keep it warm, so you wouldn't want to take off your face mask."

The inner world, she said, could well be covered with a planet-wide ocean, if it has the same volume of water as Earth does relative to its size. That means it might be perpetually cloudy as well, since so much water so close to the star would result in a lot of evaporation.That's a good thing, because the clouds would reflect some of the star's heat, which might otherwise make the surface too hot.

Neither planet, in short, would be exactly like Earth, either in size or in atmosphere, but astronomers are getting used to the idea that that isn't really required for life anyway. "People have wanted to see an exact analog of Earth orbiting an exact analog of the Sun," said Kaltenegger, and Kepler or another mission may yet find such a world. But if you're looking for a place where life might have taken hold, he adds, a mirror Earth isn't necessary.

For Borucki, who had to push NASA for more than a decade before finally getting Kepler approved in 2000, and had to work for nearly a decade more to get it built and launched, the discovery of the Kepler 62 system—which also has three non-habitable planets, dubbed 62b, c and d, and possibly more to be found—is an excuse to get just a little poetic.

Imagine standing on the outer of these two possibly habitable planets and gazing up into the sky, he says. The inner planet, 62e, would be about as far as Venus is from Earth—but it would be significantly larger. Venus is already the brightest object in our own night sky, after the Sun and the Moon, and 62e would be brighter still. "It would," says Borucki, "be an amazing, beautiful jewel in the sky."

Kepler telescope spies 'most Earth-like' worlds to date

Jonathan Amos - BBC News

The search for a far-off twin of Earth has turned up two of the most intriguing candidates yet.

Scientists say these new worlds are the right size and distance from their parent star, so that you might expect to find liquid water on their surface.

It is impossible to know for sure. Being 1,200 light-years away, they are beyond detailed inspection by current telescope technology.

But researchers tell Science magazine, they are an exciting discovery.

"They are the best candidates found to date for habitable planets," stated Bill Borucki, who leads the team working on the US space agency Nasa's orbiting Kepler telescope.

The prolific observatory has so far confirmed the existence of more than 100 new worlds beyond our Solar System since its launch in 2009.

The two now being highlighted were actually found in a group of five planets circling a star that is slightly smaller, cooler and older than our own Sun. Called Kepler-62, this star is located in the Constellation Lyra.

Its two outermost worlds go by the names Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f.

They are what one might term "super-Earths" because their dimensions are somewhat larger than our home planet - about one-and-a-half-times the Earth's diameter.

Nonetheless, their size, the researchers say, still suggests that they are either rocky, like Earth, or composed mostly of ice. Certainly, they would appear to be too small to be gaseous worlds, like a Neptune or a Jupiter.

Many assumptions

Planets 62e and 62f also happen to sit a sufficient distance from their host star that they receive a very tolerable amount of energy. They are neither too hot, nor too cold; a region of space around a star sometimes referred to as the "Goldilocks Zone".

Given the right kind of atmosphere, it is therefore reasonable to speculate, says the team, that they might be able to sustain water in a liquid state - a generally accepted precondition for life.

"Statements about a planet's habitability always depend on assumptions," said Lisa Kaltenegger, an expert on the likely atmospheres of "exoplanets" and a member of the discovery group.

"Let us assume that the planets Kepler-62e and -62f are indeed rocky, as their radius would indicate. Let us further assume that they have water and their atmospheric composition is similar to that of Earth, dominated by nitrogen, and containing water and carbon dioxide," the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg researcher went on.

"In that case, both planets could have liquid water on their surface: Kepler-62f gets less radiation energy from its host star than the Earth from the Sun and therefore needs more greenhouse gases, for Instance more carbon dioxide, than Earth to remain unfrozen.

"Kepler-62e is closer to its star, and needs an increased cloud cover - sufficient to reflect some of the star's radiation - to allow for liquid water on its surface."

Key signatures

None of this can be confirmed - not with today's technology. But with future telescopes, scientists say it may be possible to see past the blinding glare of the parent star to pick out just the faint light passing through a small world's atmosphere or even reflected off its surface.

This would permit the detection of chemical signatures associated with specific atmospheric gases and perhaps even some surface processes. Researchers have spoken in the past of trying to detect a marker for chlorophyll, the pigment in plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.

Dr Suzanne Aigrain is a lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Oxford.

She said ground-based experiments and space missions planned in the next few years would give more detailed information on distant planets like those announced by the Kepler team.

Astronomers would like to pin down the masses of the planets (information difficult to acquire with Kepler), as well as getting that data on atmospheric composition.

Dr Aigrain told BBC News: "What we do next is we try to find more systems like these; we try to measure the frequency of these systems; and we try to characterise individual systems and individual planets in more detail.

"That involves measuring their masses and their radii, and if possible getting an idea of what's in their atmospheres. But this is a very challenging task."

Kepler meanwhile will just keep counting planets beyond our Solar System.

It is equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space. It senses the presence of planets by looking for a tiny "shadowing" effect when one of them passes in front of its parent star.

Discovered!
Most Earth-like alien planet & 2 other possibly habitable worlds

Mike Wall - Space.com

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered three exoplanets that may be capable of supporting life, and one of them is perhaps the most Earth-like alien world spotted to date, scientists announced Thursday.

That most intriguing one is called Kepler-62f, a rocky world just 1.4 times bigger than Earth that circles a star smaller and dimmer than the sun. Kepler-62f's newfound neighbor, Kepler-62e, is just 1.6 times larger than Earth, making the pair among the smallest exoplanets yet found in their star's habitable zone — the just-right range of distances where liquid water can exist on a world's surface.

Kepler-62e and f, which are part of a newly discovered five-planet system, "look very good as possibilities for looking for life," said Kepler science principal investigator Bill Borucki, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The third potentially habitable planet, called Kepler-69c, is 1.7 times bigger than Earth and orbits a star similar to our own. It's the smallest world ever found in the habitable zone of a sunlike star, researchers said, and represents a big step toward discovering the first-ever "alien Earth."

"We're moving very rapidly toward finding an Earth analogue around a star like the sun," Borucki told SPACE.com.

Researchers announced these newfound planets — all three of which are "super-Earths," or worlds slightly larger than our own — today at a NASA news conference. The Kepler-62 discovery paper, led by Borucki, was also published today in the journal Science; the Kepler-69 study, led by Thomas Barclay of the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, Calif., appeared today in The Astrophysical Journal.

The three potentially habitable worlds are part of a larger haul. All told, the scientists rolled out seven new exoplanets today — five in the Kepler-62 system and two in Kepler-69.

Alien water worlds?

The five newfound planets in the Kepler-62 system, which is located about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, range from 0.54 to 1.95 times the size of Earth. Only Kepler-62e and f are potentially habitable; the other three zip around the star at close range, making them too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said.

Kepler-62e and f take 122 and 267 days, respectively, to complete one orbit around their star, which is just 20 percent as bright as the sun. While nobody knows what the two exoplanets look like, a separate modeling study suggests they're both probably water worlds covered by endless, uninterrupted global oceans.

"There may be life there, but could it be technology-based like ours? Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy," lead author Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

"Nonetheless, these worlds will still be beautiful blue planets circling an orange star — and maybe life's inventiveness to get to a technology stage will surprise us," she added.

Not surprisingly, Kepler-62e should be warmer than its more distantly orbiting neighbor. In fact, Kepler-62f may require a greenhouse effect to keep its ocean from freezing over, researchers said.

"Kepler-62e probably has a very cloudy sky and is warm and humid all the way to the polar regions," co-author Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard said in a statement. "Kepler-62f would be cooler, but still potentially life-friendly."

The new modeling study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

Searching for Earth's twin

The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Kepler finds alien worlds by detecting the tiny brightness dips caused when they transit, or cross the face of, their stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler has used this technique to great effect, spotting more than 2,700 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. While just 120 or so of these candidates have been confirmed to date, mission scientists estimate that more than 90 percent will end up being the real deal.

While Kepler has yet to discover a true Earth twin, it's getting closer and closer, Borucki said, pointing to the confirmation of Kepler-69c as an example. (That planet lies 2,700 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-69c's neighbor Kepler-69b, which is about twice the size of Earth and too hot to host life, was also announced today.)

"I think we're making excellent progress in that direction," Borucki said. "We have a number of candidates that look good."

Such steady progress makes sense, since Kepler will of course spot more transits the longer it looks. The telescope needs to observe three transits to flag a planet candidate, so detecting a potentially habitable world in a relatively distant orbit can take several years.

Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that, Borucki said.

"This is one of the early steps, but there's no mistake — we are on our way to explore the galaxy, to learn about life in the galaxy," he said.

It's Time for Next Phase in Search for Alien Life, Scientists Say

Mike Wall - Space.com

With more and more Earth-like alien planets being discovered around the galaxy, humanity should now start planning out the next steps in its hunt for far-flung alien life, researchers say.

On Thursday, scientists announced the discovery of three more potentially habitable exoplanets — Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c — further suggesting that the cosmos is jam-packed with worlds capable of supporting life as we know it.

So the time is right to get the ball rolling beyond mere discovery to the detailed study and characterization of promising alien planets, researchers said — a task that will require new and more powerful instruments.

"You really want to collect the light from these planets, to figure out — take the data, not just infer —whether or not there's water, and even signs of life, on these planets," Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was part of the team that discovered Kepler-62e and f, said during a press conference Thursday.

Billions of Earth-like planets

As their names suggest, the three newfound planets were discovered by NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has spotted more than 2,700 potential alien worlds since its March 2009 launch. Just 122 have been confirmed to date, but mission scientists expect more than 90 percent will end up being the real deal.

The $600 million Kepler mission was designed to determine how common Earth-like planets are around the Milky Way galaxy. Its observations so far suggest our home planet may not be so special.

For example, astronomers recently used Kepler data to estimate that 6 percent of the galaxy's 75 billion or so red dwarfs — stars smaller and dimmer than the sun — likely host habitable, roughly Earth-size planets.

That works out to a minimum of 4.5 billion "alien Earths," the closest of which may be just 13 light-years or so away, according to the study.

While Kepler's work is not done, the instrument has already laid the foundation for the next generation of exoplanet missions, mission team members said.

"In many ways, Kepler was a scout. It scouted deep into the galaxy to find out what the frequencies were, and to show there were a lot of planets to find. It's accomplished that," Kepler science principal investigator Bill Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that found Kepler-62e and f, said at Thursday's press conference.

"And now these new missions will come online and give us more information about these planets," Borucki added, referring to efforts such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will launch in 2017 to search for nearby alien worlds. "But the big step is that step where we first start measuring the composition of the atmospheres, and that will be a very technologically difficult task."

Scanning exoplanet air

Borucki and other researchers are keen to get a look at exoplanet atmospheres because the gases present in them can reveal a great deal about the worlds' potential to host life.

Finding carbon dioxide, water and oxygen would bolster the case for a planet's habitability, for example, while spotting extremely complex compounds could make headlines around the world.

"If there are freons, I mean, you've got it made," Borucki said. "Obviously, intelligent life is there."

Studying exoplanets' air will require blocking out the overwhelming glare of their parent stars, which are a billion times brighter than the planets themselves, Borucki said.

That's a daunting task but not an impossible one. A decade ago, in fact, a proposed NASA mission called the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) devised two different techniques to study exoplanet atmospheres, with a possible maximum range of 30 light-years or more.

Funding for TPF never materialized, and the project is now regarded as cancelled. But Borucki expressed confidence that the ongoing exoplanet revolution sparked in large part by Kepler will bring the project back, though not necessarily under the same name.

"Undoubtedly, it at some point will be reinstated," he told SPACE.com. "As we progress in the exploration of the galaxy, looking for life, we must start looking at the atmospheres. Everybody recognizes that."

What Might Alien Life Look Like on New 'Water World' Planets?

Mike Wall - Space.com

Two newly discovered alien planets might be water worlds whose global oceans are teeming with life, scientists say.

The existence of the distant exoplanets, called Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, was unveiled during a NASA press conference Thursday. The two worlds are perhaps the most promising life-hosting candidates yet found beyond our solar system, their discoverers said. Computer models suggest both planets are covered by uninterrupted oceans, which could theoretically support a wealth of aquatic lifeforms.

"Look at our own ocean — it is just absolutely full of life," said Bill Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., leader of the team that discovered the two exoplanets. "We think, in fact, life [on Earth] might have begun there."

Borucki is science principal investigator of NASA's Kepler space telescope, which spotted Kepler-62e and f. The two alien worlds are 1.6 and 1.4 times bigger than Earth, respectively, and orbit in their star's habitable zone — the just-right range of distances that can support liquid water on a planet's surface.

The five-planet Kepler-62 system lies 1,200 light-years away, making it much too distant for current instruments to study in detail. So any talk of potential life on Kepler-62e and f, if it exists at all, is just speculation for now, Borucki stressed.

But such speculation is hard to resist. For example, Borucki raised the possibility that the newfound "super-Earths" — worlds just slightly bigger than our own planet — could host winged organisms, even if both planets are indeed water worlds.

"At least in our ocean, we have flying fish. They 'fly' to get away from predators," Borucki said.

"So we might find that they have evolved — birds — on this ocean planet," he added, referring to Kepler-62e.

Water worlds are unlikely to host technologically advanced civilizations like our own, Borucki and other researchers said, because any lifeforms that take root there would not have easy access to electricity or fire for metallurgy.

But if Kepler-62e or f has some dry land, Borucki said, the story could be different. The relatively high gravity of both exoplanets, however, might make the evolution of large bipedal organisms such as humans unlikely.

"We might not have gotten off four legs" if our ancestors had evolved on Kepler-62e or f, Borucki said. Still, the gravity isn't too oppressive; we'd be able to walk around on Kepler-62f's surface if transported there today, he added.

We'd have to take some special life-support gear if we made that 1,200-light-year journey. While Kepler-62e is likely hot and muggy all the way up to the polar regions, Kepler-62f orbits a bit farther away from the host star and is probably cooler.

In fact, a thick atmosphere with lots of heat-trapping carbon dioxide may be required to keep Kepler-62f's surface water liquid. Such an atmosphere would be tough for humans to handle.

"If you want to write a science-fiction story, and you land on both [planets], at least be sure that on f you don't want to take your mask thingy off," said modeling-study lead author Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Kepler-62e and f are part of a trove of seven newfound planets announced today. Kepler spotted three other planets in the Kepler-62 system as well, all of them too hot to support life. The other two worlds are in the Kepler-69 system, which lies about 2,700 light-years from Earth.

The newly discovered Kepler-69c, which is 1.7 times larger than Earth, may also be capable of supporting life, researchers said.

UGA goes to space, has planetary system named after it

Urvaksh Karkaria - Atlanta Business Chronicle

The University of Georgia apparently is the world's first university to have a planetary system named after it.

The Kepler mission, NASA's first mission capable of finding earth-size planets, confirmed in 2012 the existence of three new planets in the system known as Kepler-37.

This year, NASA authorized the nickname designation of this planetary system as UGA-1785.

Roger C. Hunter, a Franklin College alumnus, was program manager for the Kepler mission when it went into operation in 2008. Hunter began looking for ways to connect the mission with the public imagination and honor his alma mater.

NASA first approved the naming of one other planet, Kepler 16-B, for Tatooine, a fictional planet from the Star Wars film series that was the home of Luke Skywalker, before naming UGA-1785.

When the Kepler-37 system was confirmed in 2012, Hunter noticed from reports that the innermost planet in the system was the smallest ever detected with the Kepler space observatory.

Measurements indicated its distance to be 211 light years away from the Earth and about the size of the Earth's moon.

"Knowing my UGA history, I knew that the light from this star began its journey toward the Kepler telescope in 1801, the same year that the Franklin College (of Arts and Science) was founded and that classes began at UGA," Hunter said, noting the origins of UGA-1785.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Friday, April 19, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Kepler) News - April 19, 2013 and JSC Today

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