http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org) —Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics, helped guide the Kepler mission when he served as director of NASA Ames Research Center. He explains how NASA might bring the planet-hunting spacecraft back online. http://phys.org/news287938435.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 May 2013 15:54:04 EST news287938435 NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program has selected the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission to fly in 2017. TESS will follow in the footsteps of NASA's pioneering Kepler Mission, continuing the groundbreaking work of discovering Earth-size exoplanets. NASA selected TESS and another explorer mission after a competition that evaluated proposals for the best scientific value and most feasible development plans. http://phys.org/news285840497.html Space & Earth Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:08:23 EST news285840497 Astronomers have their fingers crossed that within the haul of data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, which has already detected nearly three thousand possible exoplanets, hide the signatures of the very first exomoons. http://phys.org/news281691550.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 Mar 2013 07:39:19 EST news281691550 Although hundreds of planets orbiting other stars have been discovered in the past 15 years, we cannot yet answer the age-old question of whether any of these planets are capable of sustaining life. However, new NASA technology may change that, by giving us our first look at distant planets that not only are the right size and traveling in the temperate habitable zone of their host star, but also show signs of potential life, such as atmospheric oxygen and liquid water. http://phys.org/news280146215.html Space & Earth Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:10:06 EST news280146215 (Phys.org)—NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. http://phys.org/news276863638.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:34:06 EST news276863638 (Phys.org)—Look up at the night sky and you'll see stars, sure. But you're also seeing planets—billions and billions of them. At least. http://phys.org/news276415631.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Jan 2013 06:07:28 EST news276415631 (Phys.org)—NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope's three-and-a-half-year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years. http://phys.org/news272184815.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:53:45 EST news272184815 The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., is releasing 12 additional months worth of planet-searching data meticulously collected by one of the most prolific planet-hunting endeavors ever conceived, NASA's Kepler Mission. http://phys.org/news270742818.html Space & Earth Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:20:31 EST news270742818 (Phys.org)—Despite being infamously demoted from its status as a major planet, Pluto (and its largest companion Charon) recently posed as a surrogate extrasolar planetary system to help astronomers produce exceptionally high-resolution images with the Gemini North 8-meter telescope. Using a method called reconstructive speckle imaging, the researchers took the sharpest ground-based snapshots ever obtained of Pluto and Charon in visible light, which hint at the exoplanet verification power of a large state-of-the-art telescope when combined with speckle imaging techniques. The data also verified and refined previous orbital characteristics for Pluto and Charon while revealing the pair's precise diameters. http://phys.org/news267896558.html Space & Earth Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:43:08 EST news267896558 NASA's Kepler mission has found the first multi-planet solar system orbiting a binary star, characterized in large part by University of Texas at Austin astronomers using two telescopes at the university's McDonald Observatory in West Texas. The finding, which proves that whole planetary systems can form in a disk around a binary star, is published in the August 28 issue of the journal Science. http://phys.org/news265374281.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:30:02 EST news265374281 In the search for Earth-like planets, it is helpful to look for clues and patterns that can help scientist narrow down the types of systems where potentially habitable planets are likely to be discovered. New research from a team including Carnegie's Alan Boss narrows down the search for Earth-like planets near Jupiter-like planets. Their work indicates that the early post-formation movements of hot-Jupiter planets probably disrupt the formation of Earth-like planets. http://phys.org/news255628832.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 May 2012 17:00:50 EST news255628832 With NASA’s tight budget, there were concerns that some of the agency’s most successful astrophysics missions might not be able to continue. Anxieties were rampant about one mission in particular, the very fruitful exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission, as several years of observations are required in order for Kepler to confirm a repeated orbit as a planet transits its star. But today, after a long awaited Senior Review of nine astrophysics missions, surprisingly all have received funding to continue at least through 2014, with several mission extensions, including Kepler. http://phys.org/news252746969.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:29:40 EST news252746969 (PhysOrg.com) -- Armchair explorers of the cosmos can now have at their fingertips the nearly 2,000 distant planetary systems discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission. Kepler Explorer, an innovative app for iPads and iPhones developed by a team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, provides interactive displays of newly discovered planetary systems based on Kepler data. http://phys.org/news252694004.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:47:15 EST news252694004 (PhysOrg.com) -- This artist's concept depicts a planetary system so compact that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets. Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based telescopes recently confirmed that the system, called KOI-961, hosts the three smallest exoplanets currently known to orbit a star other than our sun. An exoplanet is a planet that resides outside of our solar system. http://phys.org/news251021165.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:06:16 EST news251021165 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, its host star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form. http://phys.org/news246815362.html Space & Earth Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:49:42 EST news246815362 The discovery of the three smallest planets yet orbiting a distant star, which was announced today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, has an unusual connection to Barnard's star, one of the Sun's nearest neighbors. http://phys.org/news245509413.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:00:10 EST news245509413 Using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission, astronomers announced the discovery of two new transiting “circumbinary” planet systems -- planets that orbit two stars. This work establishes that such “two sun” planets are not rare exceptions, but are in fact common with many millions existing in our Galaxy. The work is published today in the journal Nature and presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, TX. http://phys.org/news245503353.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:00:01 EST news245503353 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun. http://phys.org/news243610019.html Space & Earth Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:27:13 EST news243610019 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. http://phys.org/news242310714.html Space & Earth Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:32:04 EST news242310714 Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). http://phys.org/news242054748.html Space & Earth Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:26:16 EST news242054748 More than a thousand visitors turned out for the Kepler Mission-themed corn maze on Oct. 1, 2011, hosted by NASA and the Dell’Osso Family Farm of Lathrop, Calif. http://phys.org/news237626500.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:23:30 EST news237626500 NASA has released an interactive, educational video game called NetworKing that depicts how the Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) network operates. The release of the video game coincides with the close of World Space Week, Oct. 4-10. http://phys.org/news237626349.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:20:00 EST news237626349 (PhysOrg.com) -- A project in which volunteers hunt online for new planets NASA may have missed is publishing its first results which show some remarkable finds. http://phys.org/news236496700.html Space & Earth Thu, 29 Sep 2011 06:32:10 EST news236496700 Once again news from the Kepler mission is making the rounds, this time with a research paper outlining a theory that Earth-like planets may be more common around class F, G and K stars than originally expected. http://phys.org/news236425928.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:52:19 EST news236425928 Since the online citizen science project Planet Hunters launched last December, 40,000 web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting around them. http://phys.org/news235885005.html Space & Earth Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:37:05 EST news235885005 The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia counted 548 confirmed extrasolar planets at 6 May 2011, while the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (updated weekly) was today reporting 535. These are confirmed findings and the counts will significantly increase as more candidate exoplanets are assessed. For example, there were the 1,235 candidates announced by the Kepler mission in February, including 54 that may be in a habitable zone. http://phys.org/news224157295.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 May 2011 11:20:01 EST news224157295 We are entering a golden era for "stellar physics" – a term coined to describe research about the formation, evolution, interior and the atmospheres of stars. Thanks to a partnership forged among stellar astrophysics, scientists and NASA’s Kepler Mission, a goldmine of data is now available to support the world's efforts to detect planets in the habitable zone around other stars. http://phys.org/news221909838.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:37:51 EST news221909838 Wow. This remarkable visualization shows every Kepler planetary candidate host star with its transiting companion in silhouette. Jason Rowe from the Kepler science team created the image, and the sizes of the stars and transiting companions are properly scaled. http://phys.org/news220710703.html Space & Earth Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:32:15 EST news220710703 NASA's Kepler Mission is giving astronomers such a clear view of changes in star brightness that they can now see clues about what's happening inside red giant stars. http://phys.org/news220709019.html Space & Earth Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:04:01 EST news220709019 (PhysOrg.com) -- Today an international team of astronomers reports the discovery of waves inside a star that travel so deep that they reach the core. The discovery was published in the renowned journal Science, and was possible thanks to precise measurements with the Kepler space telescope. http://phys.org/news219659892.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:46:25 EST news219659892