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"content": "\u003cp>If you’ve been following the drama unfolding in the early evening sky over the past week, you may have seen two brilliant luminaries, planets Venus and Jupiter, getting closer together, night by night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have not been hallucinating, and we’re not under attack by alien spacecraft!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus and Jupiter are engaged in a rare close conjunction, something you don’t want to miss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tonight is the night they will be closest to each other—about a third of a degree apart—less than the width of the full moon!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”g8IYD5aL5cScRoCBqNAYXr5NmoPxT1Ot”]Venus is the brighter one, Jupiter the more distant, though still stunningly bright, partner in this dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find them, you need only look west after sunset—assuming there are clear skies and an unobstructed horizon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in the glow of twilight, each of these planets is bright enough to be seen, and together more so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Planetary conjunctions are not particularly rare. Get-togethers by any two of the visible planets occur periodically as the planets go through their orbital cycles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is rare in this conjunction is how close Jupiter and Venus will get—as well as the fact that these two are the brightest planets in Earth’s skies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spectacle will be, well, spectacular to the casual gazer—no telescopes required! But, if you happen to have a pair of binoculars, or better still, a small telescope, it only gets better. A small telescope can reveal some breathtaking details of these two planets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons can be seen in a line across Jupiter’s disk—and if the telescope is powerful enough, you might glimpse some of Jupiter’s cloud belts, or its famous Great Red Spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus, being closer to the sun than the Earth, goes through a cycle of phases like our Moon, and is currently in a crescent phase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Try seeing Jupiter’s moons and Venus’ crescent in a single telescope view at any other time—you can’t!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus and Jupiter will set around 11 p.m. PDT—sooner if your western horizon is obstructed by trees or buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Enjoy the spectacle!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find them, you need only look west after sunset—assuming there are clear skies and an unobstructed horizon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even in the glow of twilight, each of these planets is bright enough to be seen, and together more so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Planetary conjunctions are not particularly rare. Get-togethers by any two of the visible planets occur periodically as the planets go through their orbital cycles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is rare in this conjunction is how close Jupiter and Venus will get—as well as the fact that these two are the brightest planets in Earth’s skies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spectacle will be, well, spectacular to the casual gazer—no telescopes required! But, if you happen to have a pair of binoculars, or better still, a small telescope, it only gets better. A small telescope can reveal some breathtaking details of these two planets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons can be seen in a line across Jupiter’s disk—and if the telescope is powerful enough, you might glimpse some of Jupiter’s cloud belts, or its famous Great Red Spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus, being closer to the sun than the Earth, goes through a cycle of phases like our Moon, and is currently in a crescent phase.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Try seeing Jupiter’s moons and Venus’ crescent in a single telescope view at any other time—you can’t!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus and Jupiter will set around 11 p.m. PDT—sooner if your western horizon is obstructed by trees or buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Enjoy the spectacle!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In June, the European Space Agency’s \u003ca href=\"http://rosetta.esa.int/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rosetta mission\u003c/a> operators received a welcome surprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta’s landing probe Philae has been silent since November when it set down awkwardly on the surface of comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this month, Philae sent signals to its mothership Rosetta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta and Philae were launched in 2004 on a ten-year journey to reach and explore 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73375\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-73375 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces-400x266.jpg\" alt=\"Philae's awkward bouncy landing on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\" width=\"400\" height=\"266\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces.jpg 615w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Philae’s awkward bouncy landing on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Philae is the first spacecraft ever to have contacted a comet, and the fact that it functioned after landing and sent back observations from the surface qualify the landing as successful, even if things did not go as planned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Key systems on Philae that were designed to “make it stick” to the comet upon landing failed to go off as designed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A thruster that was supposed to push the robot firmly onto the surface and prevent it from bouncing off did not function, and a harpoon system, intended to anchor it permanently to the comet, failed to deploy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Philae bounced in the comet’s extremely low gravity environment—bounced more than once, in fact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it finally came to rest, mission controllers did not know exactly where it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make matters worse, Philae settled down in the shadow of a cliff, with its solar panels turned to an unfavorable angle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty-seven hours after its final landing, Philae’s battery power was depleted, and it went silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73378\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-73378 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-400x400.jpg\" alt=\"Surface close-up of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta spacecraft. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-400x400.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-1440x1440.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-1180x1180.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-960x960.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-75x75.jpg 75w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surface close-up of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta spacecraft. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There were hopes that, as comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko got closer to the sun, and perhaps Philae’s solar panels achieved a more productive face-off with the sun’s light, its batteries might recharge to the point where it could come out of its accidental hibernation—\u003ca href=\"http://news.discovery.com/space/philae-comet-lander-back-in-touch-with-mothership-150622.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">which has now happened\u003c/a>!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Philae’s first “pings” came on June 13 and 14, and, following a brief relapse into silence, June 19. Mission operators are assessing Philae’s state, but are hopeful that its historic mission is not over yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, mothership Rosetta has been tagging along with the comet since it arrived there in August 2014, making observations and measurements of the comet’s nucleus and the shroud of gas and dust it has developed as it heats up in the increasingly intense sunlight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The comet will reach perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, on August 13th, and afterward will move away from the sun again, toward the more distant end of its six-and-a-half year elliptical orbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_75772\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 5333px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-75772 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko.jpg\" alt=\"Map of different terrain types of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\" width=\"5333\" height=\"3333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko.jpg 5333w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-1180x737.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 5333px) 100vw, 5333px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of different terrain types of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the time since its arrival, Rosetta has shown us \u003ca href=\"http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Getting_to_know_Rosetta_s_comet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the nature of the comet\u003c/a> in unprecedented detail. Some of the highlights of its discoveries are:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The comet’s surface has been mapped into 19 different regions with distinct boundaries comprising five diverse types of terrain: dust-coated areas; rugged terrain filled with pits and other depressions; smoother patches; and different exposed rocky zones, including localities of exposed water ice.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The comet’s average density is 470 kilograms per cubic meter—which tells scientists that if, as it is believed, the comet’s overall composition is mostly water ice, then the comet is highly porous, with as much as 70 to 80 percent of its volume dominated by small empty chambers.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Jets of gas and dust erupting from within the warming comet emerge largely from the “neck” region between Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s distinctive two-lobed shape.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>All of the data and discoveries acquired from this comet provide insight into the conditions under which it formed over 4.5 billion years ago, when our solar system was young and the planets still in their infancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has been said that primordial objects like comets are like time capsules of information about the early formation of the solar system, and missions like Rosetta hold the key to unlocking them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta’s continued study of Churyumov-Gerasimenko will only increase our understanding of our planet’s origin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is more good news than Philae’s hopeful resuscitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever Philae is able to achieve in the days or months ahead, the Rosetta mission itself \u003ca href=\"http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_mission_extended\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has been extended \u003c/a>nine months beyond the nominal December 2015 end time, giving scientists the opportunity to observe the comet’s behavior over a longer stretch of its orbital cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta has observed the comet since it was relatively far from the sun, and has been monitoring the effects of rising solar radiation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understanding how the comet behaves as it moves back toward the colder environment farther from the sun will give us a more comprehensive view of its evolution.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "In June, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta mission operators received a welcome surprise. The landing probe Philae, which set down awkwardly on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko last November and soon after was lost from contact, transmitted signals to its orbiting mothership, Rosetta.",
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"description": "In June, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta mission operators received a welcome surprise. The landing probe Philae, which set down awkwardly on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko last November and soon after was lost from contact, transmitted signals to its orbiting mothership, Rosetta.",
"title": "Europe’s Comet-Chasing Rosetta Mission Extended Until 2016 | KQED",
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"headline": "Europe’s Comet-Chasing Rosetta Mission Extended Until 2016",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In June, the European Space Agency’s \u003ca href=\"http://rosetta.esa.int/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rosetta mission\u003c/a> operators received a welcome surprise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta’s landing probe Philae has been silent since November when it set down awkwardly on the surface of comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this month, Philae sent signals to its mothership Rosetta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta and Philae were launched in 2004 on a ten-year journey to reach and explore 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73375\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-73375 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces-400x266.jpg\" alt=\"Philae's awkward bouncy landing on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\" width=\"400\" height=\"266\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/philae-bounces.jpg 615w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Philae’s awkward bouncy landing on the surface of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Philae is the first spacecraft ever to have contacted a comet, and the fact that it functioned after landing and sent back observations from the surface qualify the landing as successful, even if things did not go as planned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Key systems on Philae that were designed to “make it stick” to the comet upon landing failed to go off as designed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A thruster that was supposed to push the robot firmly onto the surface and prevent it from bouncing off did not function, and a harpoon system, intended to anchor it permanently to the comet, failed to deploy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Philae bounced in the comet’s extremely low gravity environment—bounced more than once, in fact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it finally came to rest, mission controllers did not know exactly where it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make matters worse, Philae settled down in the shadow of a cliff, with its solar panels turned to an unfavorable angle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty-seven hours after its final landing, Philae’s battery power was depleted, and it went silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73378\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-73378 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-400x400.jpg\" alt=\"Surface close-up of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta spacecraft. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-400x400.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-1440x1440.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-1180x1180.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-960x960.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup-75x75.jpg 75w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/comet-closeup.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Surface close-up of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta spacecraft. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There were hopes that, as comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko got closer to the sun, and perhaps Philae’s solar panels achieved a more productive face-off with the sun’s light, its batteries might recharge to the point where it could come out of its accidental hibernation—\u003ca href=\"http://news.discovery.com/space/philae-comet-lander-back-in-touch-with-mothership-150622.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">which has now happened\u003c/a>!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Philae’s first “pings” came on June 13 and 14, and, following a brief relapse into silence, June 19. Mission operators are assessing Philae’s state, but are hopeful that its historic mission is not over yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, mothership Rosetta has been tagging along with the comet since it arrived there in August 2014, making observations and measurements of the comet’s nucleus and the shroud of gas and dust it has developed as it heats up in the increasingly intense sunlight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The comet will reach perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, on August 13th, and afterward will move away from the sun again, toward the more distant end of its six-and-a-half year elliptical orbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_75772\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 5333px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-75772 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko.jpg\" alt=\"Map of different terrain types of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\" width=\"5333\" height=\"3333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko.jpg 5333w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-1180x737.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Ice_on_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko-960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 5333px) 100vw, 5333px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of different terrain types of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Rosetta/European Space Agency)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the time since its arrival, Rosetta has shown us \u003ca href=\"http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Getting_to_know_Rosetta_s_comet/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the nature of the comet\u003c/a> in unprecedented detail. Some of the highlights of its discoveries are:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The comet’s surface has been mapped into 19 different regions with distinct boundaries comprising five diverse types of terrain: dust-coated areas; rugged terrain filled with pits and other depressions; smoother patches; and different exposed rocky zones, including localities of exposed water ice.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>The comet’s average density is 470 kilograms per cubic meter—which tells scientists that if, as it is believed, the comet’s overall composition is mostly water ice, then the comet is highly porous, with as much as 70 to 80 percent of its volume dominated by small empty chambers.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Jets of gas and dust erupting from within the warming comet emerge largely from the “neck” region between Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s distinctive two-lobed shape.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>All of the data and discoveries acquired from this comet provide insight into the conditions under which it formed over 4.5 billion years ago, when our solar system was young and the planets still in their infancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has been said that primordial objects like comets are like time capsules of information about the early formation of the solar system, and missions like Rosetta hold the key to unlocking them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta’s continued study of Churyumov-Gerasimenko will only increase our understanding of our planet’s origin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is more good news than Philae’s hopeful resuscitation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever Philae is able to achieve in the days or months ahead, the Rosetta mission itself \u003ca href=\"http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_mission_extended\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has been extended \u003c/a>nine months beyond the nominal December 2015 end time, giving scientists the opportunity to observe the comet’s behavior over a longer stretch of its orbital cycle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rosetta has observed the comet since it was relatively far from the sun, and has been monitoring the effects of rising solar radiation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understanding how the comet behaves as it moves back toward the colder environment farther from the sun will give us a more comprehensive view of its evolution.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Active Volcanoes Spotted on Venus",
"headTitle": "Active Volcanoes Spotted on Venus | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Planetary scientists have found what they think is a smoking gun proving that the planet Venus is geologically alive—volcanoes in the act of erupting lava. Short-lived pulses of heat energy, sensed through the planet’s thick atmosphere by the Venus Express spacecraft, are explained as the red-hot glow of active pools and flows of molten rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus is often called our sister planet, being much like Earth in its size and rocky composition, but it’s more like hell than Earth. Its atmosphere is a thick blanket of carbon dioxide topped with a haze of sulfuric acid that completely hides the surface from view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The greenhouse effect from this atmosphere makes Venus hotter than the fiercest pizza oven, at about 850 degrees Fahrenheit. The air pressure on the ground is like being 3,000 feet deep in the ocean, and the CO\u003csub>2\u003c/sub> gas is so thick that spacecraft have fallen through it to land without needing parachutes—although their electronics quickly failed in the searing heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1975 and 1982, a handful of Soviet landers made \u003ca href=\"http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm\">the only visible-light images we have of the surface of Venus\u003c/a>. All the pictures show a landscape of volcanic rocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1990 and 1994, the Magellan spacecraft used radar to map the surface of Venus in detail. We’ve learned that, other than some impact craters, the surface consists entirely of different kinds of lava. The volcanoes responsible range from little domes to sets of huge fractures thousands of miles long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_74114\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-74114\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows.png\" alt=\"Lava flows on Venus\" width=\"600\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows.png 600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows-400x279.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lava flows on the east flank of the volcano Sapas Mons in a radar image from the Magellan mission. (NASA/JPL)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So we know Venus is covered with lava, most of it looking fresh. The Soviet landers recorded lightning and thunder, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/03/05/volcanoes-and-lightning-make-tiny-glass-balls-together/\">typical in volcanic eruptions\u003c/a>. And satellites have detected short-lived pulses of sulfur gases in the atmosphere, also typical of eruptions. It’s a safe guess Venus didn’t stop all of its eruptions, forever, just yesterday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, to be sure volcanism is really happening today on Venus, science wanted a clincher. In \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064088/full\">a new paper\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-8007/\">Geophysical Research Letters\u003c/a>, a team led by Eugene Shalygin of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mps.mpg.de/en\">Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research\u003c/a> presents direct evidence of erupting lava in a large set of fissures named Ganis Chasma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(A tip of the hat to Planetary Society ace reporter Emily Lakdawalla for noting that \u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06181637-transient-hot-spots-on-venus.html\">the paper’s authors called Ganis Chasma by the wrong name\u003c/a>, confusing it with the nearby Ganiki Planitia.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73147\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 364px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-73147\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-800x794.png\" alt=\"Venus location map\" width=\"364\" height=\"361\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-800x794.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-400x397.png 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-32x32.png 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-64x64.png 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-96x96.png 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-128x128.png 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-75x75.png 75w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global.png 816w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 364px) 100vw, 364px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Radar map of Venus showing the location of Ganis Chasma, a large set of fissures flanking the volcano Ozza Mons, itself part of the great Aphrodite Terra volcanic structure. (NASA/JPL)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The evidence was recorded by an infrared camera on the spacecraft Venus Express, launched by the European Space Agency in 2005. Before ending its work late last year and burning up in the Venusian atmosphere, Venus Express used its camera to study the planet at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The orbiting camera was sensitive to infrared light at wavelengths at which Venus’s atmosphere is somewhat transparent, but the pictures were like watching a scene through heavy, blowing fog. Nevertheless, it detected four different places in Ganis Chasma that were slightly hotter than their surroundings. During earlier and later visits, these hot spots were absent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shalygin and his five coauthors systematically eliminated camera errors and other explanations. They calculated that a fairly small pool of lava, maybe the size of Hawaii’s Halemaumau crater, could look like a large patch of slightly warmer temperature when seen through the blurring atmosphere of Venus. A larger flow of lava, cooling down after its eruption, would do the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ganis Chasma eruptions appear to resemble basaltic fissure eruptions on Earth, like those of the volcanoes of Hawaii and Iceland. Here, lava flows may take years to cool down, but the hot spots on Venus disappeared in a matter of months. The authors speculate that the dense atmosphere cools the lava quickly, just as seawater does on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73148\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 476px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-73148\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs-800x450.png\" alt=\"Eruptive hot spots, Ganis Chasma, Venus\" width=\"476\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs-400x225.png 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs.png 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hot spots on Ganis Chasma recorded by Venus Express. The spots lie exactly where eruptions are expected. (Shalygin/American Geophysical Union)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The authors recommend that we keep a close eye on Ganis Chasma and Atla Regio, the larger volcanic region of which it’s a part. Of course, there are no spacecraft at Venus at the moment. Twenty years after the Magellan mission, our current radar technology \u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/van-kane/20150302-understanding-venus.html\">could map Venus as well as we’re mapping Mars\u003c/a> in visible light.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists have had no luck getting a new radar mapping mission off the ground. Venus researchers, like all scientists who rely on spacecraft missions, play a high-stakes gambling game as they make funding proposals to two major sponsors: NASA and the European Space Agency. ESA just finished choosing its next set of medium-class missions, and Venus lost out in that round. Now NASA is considering 28 proposals for its next round of Discovery-class missions, and there are said to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2722/1\">four Venus proposals\u003c/a> in play there.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Spacecraft captures evidence of molten lava, clinching the argument that Venus is geologically alive.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Planetary scientists have found what they think is a smoking gun proving that the planet Venus is geologically alive—volcanoes in the act of erupting lava. Short-lived pulses of heat energy, sensed through the planet’s thick atmosphere by the Venus Express spacecraft, are explained as the red-hot glow of active pools and flows of molten rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Venus is often called our sister planet, being much like Earth in its size and rocky composition, but it’s more like hell than Earth. Its atmosphere is a thick blanket of carbon dioxide topped with a haze of sulfuric acid that completely hides the surface from view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The greenhouse effect from this atmosphere makes Venus hotter than the fiercest pizza oven, at about 850 degrees Fahrenheit. The air pressure on the ground is like being 3,000 feet deep in the ocean, and the CO\u003csub>2\u003c/sub> gas is so thick that spacecraft have fallen through it to land without needing parachutes—although their electronics quickly failed in the searing heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1975 and 1982, a handful of Soviet landers made \u003ca href=\"http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm\">the only visible-light images we have of the surface of Venus\u003c/a>. All the pictures show a landscape of volcanic rocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1990 and 1994, the Magellan spacecraft used radar to map the surface of Venus in detail. We’ve learned that, other than some impact craters, the surface consists entirely of different kinds of lava. The volcanoes responsible range from little domes to sets of huge fractures thousands of miles long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_74114\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 600px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-74114\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows.png\" alt=\"Lava flows on Venus\" width=\"600\" height=\"419\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows.png 600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-lava-flows-400x279.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lava flows on the east flank of the volcano Sapas Mons in a radar image from the Magellan mission. (NASA/JPL)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>So we know Venus is covered with lava, most of it looking fresh. The Soviet landers recorded lightning and thunder, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/03/05/volcanoes-and-lightning-make-tiny-glass-balls-together/\">typical in volcanic eruptions\u003c/a>. And satellites have detected short-lived pulses of sulfur gases in the atmosphere, also typical of eruptions. It’s a safe guess Venus didn’t stop all of its eruptions, forever, just yesterday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, to be sure volcanism is really happening today on Venus, science wanted a clincher. In \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064088/full\">a new paper\u003c/a> in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-8007/\">Geophysical Research Letters\u003c/a>, a team led by Eugene Shalygin of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.mps.mpg.de/en\">Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research\u003c/a> presents direct evidence of erupting lava in a large set of fissures named Ganis Chasma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(A tip of the hat to Planetary Society ace reporter Emily Lakdawalla for noting that \u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/06181637-transient-hot-spots-on-venus.html\">the paper’s authors called Ganis Chasma by the wrong name\u003c/a>, confusing it with the nearby Ganiki Planitia.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73147\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 364px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-73147\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-800x794.png\" alt=\"Venus location map\" width=\"364\" height=\"361\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-800x794.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-400x397.png 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-32x32.png 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-64x64.png 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-96x96.png 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-128x128.png 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global-75x75.png 75w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-global.png 816w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 364px) 100vw, 364px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Radar map of Venus showing the location of Ganis Chasma, a large set of fissures flanking the volcano Ozza Mons, itself part of the great Aphrodite Terra volcanic structure. (NASA/JPL)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The evidence was recorded by an infrared camera on the spacecraft Venus Express, launched by the European Space Agency in 2005. Before ending its work late last year and burning up in the Venusian atmosphere, Venus Express used its camera to study the planet at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The orbiting camera was sensitive to infrared light at wavelengths at which Venus’s atmosphere is somewhat transparent, but the pictures were like watching a scene through heavy, blowing fog. Nevertheless, it detected four different places in Ganis Chasma that were slightly hotter than their surroundings. During earlier and later visits, these hot spots were absent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shalygin and his five coauthors systematically eliminated camera errors and other explanations. They calculated that a fairly small pool of lava, maybe the size of Hawaii’s Halemaumau crater, could look like a large patch of slightly warmer temperature when seen through the blurring atmosphere of Venus. A larger flow of lava, cooling down after its eruption, would do the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Ganis Chasma eruptions appear to resemble basaltic fissure eruptions on Earth, like those of the volcanoes of Hawaii and Iceland. Here, lava flows may take years to cool down, but the hot spots on Venus disappeared in a matter of months. The authors speculate that the dense atmosphere cools the lava quickly, just as seawater does on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_73148\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 476px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-73148\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs-800x450.png\" alt=\"Eruptive hot spots, Ganis Chasma, Venus\" width=\"476\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs-800x450.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs-400x225.png 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/venus-volcs.png 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hot spots on Ganis Chasma recorded by Venus Express. The spots lie exactly where eruptions are expected. (Shalygin/American Geophysical Union)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The authors recommend that we keep a close eye on Ganis Chasma and Atla Regio, the larger volcanic region of which it’s a part. Of course, there are no spacecraft at Venus at the moment. Twenty years after the Magellan mission, our current radar technology \u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/van-kane/20150302-understanding-venus.html\">could map Venus as well as we’re mapping Mars\u003c/a> in visible light.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists have had no luck getting a new radar mapping mission off the ground. Venus researchers, like all scientists who rely on spacecraft missions, play a high-stakes gambling game as they make funding proposals to two major sponsors: NASA and the European Space Agency. ESA just finished choosing its next set of medium-class missions, and Venus lost out in that round. Now NASA is considering 28 proposals for its next round of Discovery-class missions, and there are said to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2722/1\">four Venus proposals\u003c/a> in play there.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Young Mars: The Red Planet Started Out White",
"headTitle": "Young Mars: The Red Planet Started Out White | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Mars is full of evidence that running water once crisscrossed its surface. Many scientists argue that in its early days, the red planet was nearly blue—a relatively warm place with lakes and even an ocean around its north pole. But a sophisticated climate model suggests instead that Mars started out as a cold, icy planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve always wondered whether Mars has supported life. Just a century ago, Mars was widely thought to be inhabited by intelligent beings who had built a gigantic network of canals to cope with its desert climate. (The canals are now explained as optical illusions affecting telescopic observers.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, even though the planet appears completely sterile, it’s still a driving question whether Mars has ever had the conditions for life to begin, or at least to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">The quest for life on Mars needs to answer two questions: When was Mars wet? And for how long?\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Mars today is bone-dry and colder than Antarctica. Although it must have formed originally with lots of water and air, its weak gravity couldn’t keep water vapor and other gases from escaping to space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But we’re sure that during its first billion years or so, before the atmosphere escaped, Mars had rain and snow. Scientists think there was probably water enough for a large ocean in the lowlands around its north pole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The evidence is compelling. Orbiting spacecraft have mapped landforms that can only be riverbeds, water-carved canyons and coastlines from a former ocean basin. Robot landers have photographed features in rocks, like \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/01/17/placing-a-bet-on-the-surface-of-mars/\">crossbeds in sandstone\u003c/a>, that only flowing water can produce. And they’ve found chemical evidence of minerals, like clays and \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/01/05/a-most-earthly-mineral-on-mars/\">gypsum\u003c/a>, that require water to form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The presence of water proves Mars once had what scientists call habitable conditions. But it’s not enough just to establish that water once existed. The evidence from Earth suggests it takes many millions of years, and a specific range of physical and chemical conditions, for life to \u003ci>arise\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58718\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 504px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-58718\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-1440x900.jpg\" alt=\"This image shows layered sedimentary rocks on the floor of an impact crater north of Eberswalde Crater. There may have been a lake in this crater billions of years ago. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\" width=\"504\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-1180x738.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 504px) 100vw, 504px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This image shows layered sedimentary rocks on the floor of an impact crater north of Eberswalde Crater. There may have been a lake in this crater billions of years ago. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The quest for life on Mars needs to answer two questions: When was Mars wet? And for how long?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The evidence allows some scientists to argue that Mars was warm and wet very early, between 4 and 3 billion years ago. (All the planets are about 4.6 billion years old.) Others hold that conditions must have been dry and frozen most of the time, with brief periods of warmth and running water after geologic events like major volcanic episodes or large asteroid impacts. The prospects for life on Mars depend strongly on these details.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet a third group of researchers is approaching the history of Mars from another direction. They ask questions like, How do you build a Mars that starts out warm and wet? What kinds of global climate were once possible on Mars?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~rwordsworth/\">Robin Wordsworth\u003c/a> is one of those people. His research team at Harvard has a state-of-the-art computer model that can reproduce any given planet and its atmosphere in three dimensions. It’s aimed at \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/06/26/studying-exoplanets-what-a-thousand-points-of-light-might-reveal-about-earth/\">rocky exoplanets in general\u003c/a>, not just Mars. He trained the model on Mars with the help of colleagues Laura Kerber of Caltech, Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago, François Forget of the Laplace Institute in Paris and James Head of Brown University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58810\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 399px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-58810\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-1440x900.jpg\" alt=\"The sinuous ridges on the Orson Welles bajada mark the paths water took as it flowed into this crater. The sinuosity of the ridges tells us something about the speed of the water flow. Fast-moving flows tend to be straighter than slow-moving. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\" width=\"399\" height=\"249\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-1180x738.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 399px) 100vw, 399px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This sinuous ridges on the Orson Welles bajada marks a path that water took as it flowed into this crater. The sinuosity of the ridges tells us something about the speed of the water flow. Fast-moving flows tend to be straighter than slow-moving. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015JE004787/full\">Wordsworth’s study\u003c/a>, accepted for publication in the \u003ca href=\"http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%292169-9100/\">Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets\u003c/a>, uses his global atmospheric model to recreate the Martian climate 3 or 4 billion years ago. We know several things about that time: the sun was about three-fourths as bright as it is today, the Martian poles were tilted much more strongly, the planet’s greenhouse atmosphere was much thicker than today and most of its surface features were the same as they are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wordsworth ran two different versions of ancient Mars by manipulating the atmosphere. One had a relatively thin atmosphere, a frozen ocean and was cold, averaging -55 degrees Fahrenheit. The other had an extra-thick atmosphere, was heated by an extra-hot sun and was warm enough to support liquid water and rainfall, averaging 50 degrees Fahrenheit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The model proceeded to calculate how the winds would blow, how clouds would form, where rain and snow would fall and how the streams would flow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58352\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 470px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-58352\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Warm Mars and Cold Mars\" width=\"470\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warm, wet Mars (left) and cold, dry Mars (right) have very different appearances and produce very different effects on the landscape. Cold Mars is a much better match to the erosional patterns of water that we see on the planet today. (Robin Wordsworth)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the warm scenario, the model predicted high precipitation in certain regions like Arabia Terra and the Hellas basin, but water-carved landforms are scarce in those places. Likewise it predicted a “rain shadow” downwind of the great Tharsis bulge, but features made by water are abundant there instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the cold scenario, the steep axial tilt of Mars (nearly twice its present value, at 41.8 degrees) meant that snow and ice accumulated not around the poles but around the equator, especially in the highlands. This concentrated water-carved landforms in that region too, which is where they’re found today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, Wordsworth found it hard to make a warm Mars work at all. It required unrealistic conditions, and the results didn’t match the landscape. It was easier to have a cold Mars that could be warmed up every once in a while. Orbital changes, volcanism, and cosmic impacts could all do the job and send water coursing over the Martian surface, leaving the telltale signs that remain today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a pioneering study that relies on many simplifying assumptions. But it strongly suggests that Mars in its youth was white, not blue, before it turned red. Still unknown is whether Mars was ever green.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A pioneering study of Mars' early atmosphere suggests the planet was cold and dry, not warm and wet.",
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"title": "Young Mars: The Red Planet Started Out White | KQED",
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"headline": "Young Mars: The Red Planet Started Out White",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Mars is full of evidence that running water once crisscrossed its surface. Many scientists argue that in its early days, the red planet was nearly blue—a relatively warm place with lakes and even an ocean around its north pole. But a sophisticated climate model suggests instead that Mars started out as a cold, icy planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve always wondered whether Mars has supported life. Just a century ago, Mars was widely thought to be inhabited by intelligent beings who had built a gigantic network of canals to cope with its desert climate. (The canals are now explained as optical illusions affecting telescopic observers.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, even though the planet appears completely sterile, it’s still a driving question whether Mars has ever had the conditions for life to begin, or at least to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">The quest for life on Mars needs to answer two questions: When was Mars wet? And for how long?\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Mars today is bone-dry and colder than Antarctica. Although it must have formed originally with lots of water and air, its weak gravity couldn’t keep water vapor and other gases from escaping to space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But we’re sure that during its first billion years or so, before the atmosphere escaped, Mars had rain and snow. Scientists think there was probably water enough for a large ocean in the lowlands around its north pole.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The evidence is compelling. Orbiting spacecraft have mapped landforms that can only be riverbeds, water-carved canyons and coastlines from a former ocean basin. Robot landers have photographed features in rocks, like \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/01/17/placing-a-bet-on-the-surface-of-mars/\">crossbeds in sandstone\u003c/a>, that only flowing water can produce. And they’ve found chemical evidence of minerals, like clays and \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/01/05/a-most-earthly-mineral-on-mars/\">gypsum\u003c/a>, that require water to form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The presence of water proves Mars once had what scientists call habitable conditions. But it’s not enough just to establish that water once existed. The evidence from Earth suggests it takes many millions of years, and a specific range of physical and chemical conditions, for life to \u003ci>arise\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58718\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 504px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-58718\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-1440x900.jpg\" alt=\"This image shows layered sedimentary rocks on the floor of an impact crater north of Eberswalde Crater. There may have been a lake in this crater billions of years ago. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\" width=\"504\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-1180x738.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Mars-960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 504px) 100vw, 504px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This image shows layered sedimentary rocks on the floor of an impact crater north of Eberswalde Crater. There may have been a lake in this crater billions of years ago. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The quest for life on Mars needs to answer two questions: When was Mars wet? And for how long?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The evidence allows some scientists to argue that Mars was warm and wet very early, between 4 and 3 billion years ago. (All the planets are about 4.6 billion years old.) Others hold that conditions must have been dry and frozen most of the time, with brief periods of warmth and running water after geologic events like major volcanic episodes or large asteroid impacts. The prospects for life on Mars depend strongly on these details.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet a third group of researchers is approaching the history of Mars from another direction. They ask questions like, How do you build a Mars that starts out warm and wet? What kinds of global climate were once possible on Mars?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~rwordsworth/\">Robin Wordsworth\u003c/a> is one of those people. His research team at Harvard has a state-of-the-art computer model that can reproduce any given planet and its atmosphere in three dimensions. It’s aimed at \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/06/26/studying-exoplanets-what-a-thousand-points-of-light-might-reveal-about-earth/\">rocky exoplanets in general\u003c/a>, not just Mars. He trained the model on Mars with the help of colleagues Laura Kerber of Caltech, Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago, François Forget of the Laplace Institute in Paris and James Head of Brown University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58810\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 399px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-58810\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-1440x900.jpg\" alt=\"The sinuous ridges on the Orson Welles bajada mark the paths water took as it flowed into this crater. The sinuosity of the ridges tells us something about the speed of the water flow. Fast-moving flows tend to be straighter than slow-moving. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\" width=\"399\" height=\"249\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-1440x900.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-400x250.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-800x500.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-1180x738.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/Alluvial-this-one-960x600.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 399px) 100vw, 399px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This sinuous ridges on the Orson Welles bajada marks a path that water took as it flowed into this crater. The sinuosity of the ridges tells us something about the speed of the water flow. Fast-moving flows tend to be straighter than slow-moving. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015JE004787/full\">Wordsworth’s study\u003c/a>, accepted for publication in the \u003ca href=\"http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/agu/jgr/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%292169-9100/\">Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets\u003c/a>, uses his global atmospheric model to recreate the Martian climate 3 or 4 billion years ago. We know several things about that time: the sun was about three-fourths as bright as it is today, the Martian poles were tilted much more strongly, the planet’s greenhouse atmosphere was much thicker than today and most of its surface features were the same as they are today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wordsworth ran two different versions of ancient Mars by manipulating the atmosphere. One had a relatively thin atmosphere, a frozen ocean and was cold, averaging -55 degrees Fahrenheit. The other had an extra-thick atmosphere, was heated by an extra-hot sun and was warm enough to support liquid water and rainfall, averaging 50 degrees Fahrenheit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The model proceeded to calculate how the winds would blow, how clouds would form, where rain and snow would fall and how the streams would flow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_58352\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 470px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-58352\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-800x450.jpg\" alt=\"Warm Mars and Cold Mars\" width=\"470\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/wet-and-dry-marses.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warm, wet Mars (left) and cold, dry Mars (right) have very different appearances and produce very different effects on the landscape. Cold Mars is a much better match to the erosional patterns of water that we see on the planet today. (Robin Wordsworth)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the warm scenario, the model predicted high precipitation in certain regions like Arabia Terra and the Hellas basin, but water-carved landforms are scarce in those places. Likewise it predicted a “rain shadow” downwind of the great Tharsis bulge, but features made by water are abundant there instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the cold scenario, the steep axial tilt of Mars (nearly twice its present value, at 41.8 degrees) meant that snow and ice accumulated not around the poles but around the equator, especially in the highlands. This concentrated water-carved landforms in that region too, which is where they’re found today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, Wordsworth found it hard to make a warm Mars work at all. It required unrealistic conditions, and the results didn’t match the landscape. It was easier to have a cold Mars that could be warmed up every once in a while. Orbital changes, volcanism, and cosmic impacts could all do the job and send water coursing over the Martian surface, leaving the telltale signs that remain today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is a pioneering study that relies on many simplifying assumptions. But it strongly suggests that Mars in its youth was white, not blue, before it turned red. Still unknown is whether Mars was ever green.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NASA Mission in the Works to Explore the Ocean of Jupiter's Moon Europa",
"headTitle": "NASA Mission in the Works to Explore the Ocean of Jupiter’s Moon Europa | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>A new mission of ocean exploration is in the works—but this one isn’t bound for any place on Earth. It’s a NASA spacecraft destined for a voyage to Jupiter’s icy moon, \u003ca href=\"https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/overview.cfm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Europa\u003c/a>, which, though only the size of our own moon, may harbor an ocean twice the size of Earth’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late 1970’s and early 1990’s, NASA’s Voyager and \u003ca href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/galileo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Galileo \u003c/a>spacecraft returned tantalizing images of Europa–pictures that revealed a smooth, icy crust scored with cracks reminiscent of those in sheets of floating sea ice on Earth. These observations led to the exciting speculation that a vast ocean of liquid water lay hidden under a floating crust of ice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The presence of a body of water five times farther from the sun than the Earth has made Europa one of the most intriguing objects in the solar system, and probably the most likely place for finding some form of life beyond the Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43658\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43658\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa-400x376.jpg\" alt=\"Europa as imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (NASA/JPL/DLR)\" width=\"400\" height=\"376\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa-400x376.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa.jpg 799w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Europa as imaged by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (NASA/JPL/DLR)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The speculation even found its way into fiction, in Arthur C. Clarke’s “2010: Odyssey 2,” with some form of animate photosynthetic tendrils reaching out from a crack in the ice to pull a doomed spacecraft—and most of its crew—into the dark depths below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s new mission to Europa, to be launched in the 2020s, will seek to confirm the existence of Europa’s exo-ocean and assess its suitability as a potential life-friendly environment. Recently, NASA \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-europa-mission-begins-with-selection-of-science-instruments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">moved a step closer\u003c/a> to realizing this expedition when it selected nine proposed instruments that will form the science payload of the spacecraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter in a long, looping orbit that will carry it past Europa on as many as 45 flybys at distances from its surface ranging from 1,700 miles to an ice-scraping 16 miles. During the flybys, it will subject Europa to a barrage of analysis aimed at revealing as much about Europa and its subsurface structure and composition as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mission Instruments\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43566\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 352px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-43566\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume-400x518.jpg\" alt=\"Artist concept of a possible water vapor plume erupting from the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. (NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)\" width=\"352\" height=\"456\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume-400x518.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 352px) 100vw, 352px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist concept of a possible water vapor plume erupting from the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. (NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>High-resolution imagery will probe the composition of Europa’s surface, make a detailed study of cracks and other features between shifting ice plates, and search for the source of water vapor plumes observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012—which, if they do exist, and are supplied by the ocean deep below, may serve as a “tap” to sample directly the composition of that ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An infrared camera will look for eruptions of warmer water, while other instruments will sniff for gases and small particles in Europa’s tenuous atmosphere that may have been exuded from the subsurface ocean through plume eruptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ice-penetrating radar will look under Europa’s skin and determine the thickness of its crust of ice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A magnetometer will measure Europa’s magnetic field in an effort to determine the salinity and the depth of the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43565\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43565\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo-400x177.jpg\" alt=\"Europa's icy surfaced as imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (Artist concept of NASA's proposed Europa mission. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)\" width=\"400\" height=\"177\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo-400x177.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Europa’s icy surfaced as imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Past observations of Europa, like the snapshots taken by Voyager and Galileo, could merely show us Europa’s surface appearance, leaving us only to speculate on what was going on deep below. Close-up images taken by Galileo display patterns that pique the imagination, giving one impressions of things like ice fans on the surface of a frozen pond, glaciers, Antarctic ice sheets, and ski trails on a snowy slope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s new Europa mission will be more like a full-body scan than a snapshot, giving us a look under the icy crust, and maybe to the bottom of its deep ocean. We can yet only imagine what may exist down there—hydrothermal vents, organic compounds, microbial life, jellyfish?—but this next phase of exploration promises some awesome moments of discovery.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A new mission of ocean exploration is in the works—but this one isn't bound for any place on Earth. It's a NASA spacecraft destined for a voyage to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, which, though only the size of our own moon, may harbor an ocean twice the size of Earth'",
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"title": "NASA Mission in the Works to Explore the Ocean of Jupiter's Moon Europa | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A new mission of ocean exploration is in the works—but this one isn’t bound for any place on Earth. It’s a NASA spacecraft destined for a voyage to Jupiter’s icy moon, \u003ca href=\"https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/overview.cfm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Europa\u003c/a>, which, though only the size of our own moon, may harbor an ocean twice the size of Earth’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late 1970’s and early 1990’s, NASA’s Voyager and \u003ca href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/galileo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Galileo \u003c/a>spacecraft returned tantalizing images of Europa–pictures that revealed a smooth, icy crust scored with cracks reminiscent of those in sheets of floating sea ice on Earth. These observations led to the exciting speculation that a vast ocean of liquid water lay hidden under a floating crust of ice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The presence of a body of water five times farther from the sun than the Earth has made Europa one of the most intriguing objects in the solar system, and probably the most likely place for finding some form of life beyond the Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43658\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43658\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa-400x376.jpg\" alt=\"Europa as imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (NASA/JPL/DLR)\" width=\"400\" height=\"376\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa-400x376.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa.jpg 799w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Europa as imaged by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (NASA/JPL/DLR)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The speculation even found its way into fiction, in Arthur C. Clarke’s “2010: Odyssey 2,” with some form of animate photosynthetic tendrils reaching out from a crack in the ice to pull a doomed spacecraft—and most of its crew—into the dark depths below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s new mission to Europa, to be launched in the 2020s, will seek to confirm the existence of Europa’s exo-ocean and assess its suitability as a potential life-friendly environment. Recently, NASA \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-europa-mission-begins-with-selection-of-science-instruments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">moved a step closer\u003c/a> to realizing this expedition when it selected nine proposed instruments that will form the science payload of the spacecraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter in a long, looping orbit that will carry it past Europa on as many as 45 flybys at distances from its surface ranging from 1,700 miles to an ice-scraping 16 miles. During the flybys, it will subject Europa to a barrage of analysis aimed at revealing as much about Europa and its subsurface structure and composition as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mission Instruments\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43566\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 352px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-43566\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume-400x518.jpg\" alt=\"Artist concept of a possible water vapor plume erupting from the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. (NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)\" width=\"352\" height=\"456\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume-400x518.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_plume.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 352px) 100vw, 352px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist concept of a possible water vapor plume erupting from the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. (NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>High-resolution imagery will probe the composition of Europa’s surface, make a detailed study of cracks and other features between shifting ice plates, and search for the source of water vapor plumes observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012—which, if they do exist, and are supplied by the ocean deep below, may serve as a “tap” to sample directly the composition of that ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An infrared camera will look for eruptions of warmer water, while other instruments will sniff for gases and small particles in Europa’s tenuous atmosphere that may have been exuded from the subsurface ocean through plume eruptions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ice-penetrating radar will look under Europa’s skin and determine the thickness of its crust of ice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A magnetometer will measure Europa’s magnetic field in an effort to determine the salinity and the depth of the ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_43565\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-43565\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo-400x177.jpg\" alt=\"Europa's icy surfaced as imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (Artist concept of NASA's proposed Europa mission. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)\" width=\"400\" height=\"177\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo-400x177.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/06/europa_surface_galileo.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Europa’s icy surfaced as imaged by the Galileo spacecraft in the early 1990s. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Past observations of Europa, like the snapshots taken by Voyager and Galileo, could merely show us Europa’s surface appearance, leaving us only to speculate on what was going on deep below. Close-up images taken by Galileo display patterns that pique the imagination, giving one impressions of things like ice fans on the surface of a frozen pond, glaciers, Antarctic ice sheets, and ski trails on a snowy slope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s new Europa mission will be more like a full-body scan than a snapshot, giving us a look under the icy crust, and maybe to the bottom of its deep ocean. We can yet only imagine what may exist down there—hydrothermal vents, organic compounds, microbial life, jellyfish?—but this next phase of exploration promises some awesome moments of discovery.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NASA Spacecraft Closes in on a Summer Encounter With Pluto",
"headTitle": "NASA Spacecraft Closes in on a Summer Encounter With Pluto | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Eighty-five years after its discovery in 1930, the distant and mysterious Pluto will finally become an “explored” planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been en route to Pluto for nearly ten years, and is almost there, speeding toward a close encounter on July 14.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of late May, New Horizons was less than 35 million miles from its target–roughly the same distance from the sun to the planet Mercury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December, the small, nuclear-powered interplanetary probe awoke from a state of robotic hibernation to make ready for the flyby. Since waking, mission operators have performed systems tests and captured approach images of the Pluto system from a distance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The upcoming flyby encounter is a proverbial “don’t blink or you’ll miss it” scenario, so making sure that all systems are go is imperative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the “big reveal” will take place on July 14, New Horizons has been tantalizing us with advances on our investment of curiosity. Here are a few highlights from recent weeks:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What We Know About Pluto and Its Moons\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30556\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 293px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/OpNav3_barycen_noano-1021x1024.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30556\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/OpNav3_barycen_noano-1021x1024.gif\" alt=\"Images captured by New Horizons' LORRI instrument showing mutual revolution of Pluto and Charon. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\" width=\"293\" height=\"295\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Images captured by New Horizons’ LORRI instrument showing mutual revolution of Pluto and Charon. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150212\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series of images\u003c/a> captured by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument shows us clearly what we have known analytically for some time: that Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are more of a double-planet than a planet and its moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charon is half the diameter of Pluto, so large in comparison that the two actually orbit a point in space between them, like a pair of figure skaters swinging each other by the hands as they spin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30548\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 298px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/sk_movie-288x115.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30548\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/sk_movie-288x115.gif\" alt=\"New Horizons' captures images of all known moons of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager instrument. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\" width=\"298\" height=\"120\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New Horizons captures images of all known moons of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager instrument. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New Horizons has captured images of Pluto’s\u003ca href=\"http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150512\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> five known moons\u003c/a>, one by one. First was the large moon Charon, which it spotted almost two years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two smaller moons, Hydra and Nix, came into view in July 2014 and last January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, in late April/early May, the two smallest and faintest known satellites, Kerberos and Styx, were revealed, completing the family portrait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there are more moons orbiting Pluto, New Horizons is well-positioned to discover them as it draws closer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Polar Ice Cap on Pluto?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late April, from a distance of 70 million miles, New Horizons began to capture images of \u003ca href=\"http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150429\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">surface features on Pluto\u003c/a>, including a bright spot located at Pluto’s visible pole. It’s too soon to tell, but a bright area at a planet’s pole is suggestive of a polar ice cap, as on Earth and Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These images prove that New Horizons has begun to show us things we’ve never seen before–things we cannot presently see from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When New Horizons launched in 2006, it set forth to explore the smallest, most distant, and least understood planet in the solar system. Despite the fact that the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet shortly after launch, our scientific and imaginative curiosity about this small world is unchanged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, one of the reasons that Pluto was reclassified is that it is different from the major planets, and more similar to other objects found orbiting the sun beyond Neptune’s orbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Representative of a little-understood group of celestial bodies, the “ice dwarf planets,” one of four discovered so far, the exploration of Pluto and its moons is a first look into a realm of our solar system that we know almost nothing about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since childhood, I—along with millions of others—have dreamed about what Pluto may be like, envisioning a dark, icy landscape glittering under the weak rays of a sun no brighter than an exceptional star. That long dream is almost over–and my excitement is hard to contain!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Eight-five years after its discovery in 1930, the distant and mysterious Pluto will finally become an \"explored\" planet. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has been en route to Pluto for nearly ten years, and is almost there, speeding toward a close encounter in July. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Eighty-five years after its discovery in 1930, the distant and mysterious Pluto will finally become an “explored” planet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been en route to Pluto for nearly ten years, and is almost there, speeding toward a close encounter on July 14.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of late May, New Horizons was less than 35 million miles from its target–roughly the same distance from the sun to the planet Mercury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December, the small, nuclear-powered interplanetary probe awoke from a state of robotic hibernation to make ready for the flyby. Since waking, mission operators have performed systems tests and captured approach images of the Pluto system from a distance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The upcoming flyby encounter is a proverbial “don’t blink or you’ll miss it” scenario, so making sure that all systems are go is imperative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the “big reveal” will take place on July 14, New Horizons has been tantalizing us with advances on our investment of curiosity. Here are a few highlights from recent weeks:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What We Know About Pluto and Its Moons\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30556\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 293px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/OpNav3_barycen_noano-1021x1024.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30556\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/OpNav3_barycen_noano-1021x1024.gif\" alt=\"Images captured by New Horizons' LORRI instrument showing mutual revolution of Pluto and Charon. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\" width=\"293\" height=\"295\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Images captured by New Horizons’ LORRI instrument showing mutual revolution of Pluto and Charon. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150212\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series of images\u003c/a> captured by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument shows us clearly what we have known analytically for some time: that Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are more of a double-planet than a planet and its moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Charon is half the diameter of Pluto, so large in comparison that the two actually orbit a point in space between them, like a pair of figure skaters swinging each other by the hands as they spin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30548\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 298px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/sk_movie-288x115.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30548\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/sk_movie-288x115.gif\" alt=\"New Horizons' captures images of all known moons of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager instrument. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\" width=\"298\" height=\"120\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New Horizons captures images of all known moons of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager instrument. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New Horizons has captured images of Pluto’s\u003ca href=\"http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150512\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> five known moons\u003c/a>, one by one. First was the large moon Charon, which it spotted almost two years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two smaller moons, Hydra and Nix, came into view in July 2014 and last January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, in late April/early May, the two smallest and faintest known satellites, Kerberos and Styx, were revealed, completing the family portrait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there are more moons orbiting Pluto, New Horizons is well-positioned to discover them as it draws closer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Polar Ice Cap on Pluto?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late April, from a distance of 70 million miles, New Horizons began to capture images of \u003ca href=\"http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150429\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">surface features on Pluto\u003c/a>, including a bright spot located at Pluto’s visible pole. It’s too soon to tell, but a bright area at a planet’s pole is suggestive of a polar ice cap, as on Earth and Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These images prove that New Horizons has begun to show us things we’ve never seen before–things we cannot presently see from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When New Horizons launched in 2006, it set forth to explore the smallest, most distant, and least understood planet in the solar system. Despite the fact that the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet shortly after launch, our scientific and imaginative curiosity about this small world is unchanged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, one of the reasons that Pluto was reclassified is that it is different from the major planets, and more similar to other objects found orbiting the sun beyond Neptune’s orbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Representative of a little-understood group of celestial bodies, the “ice dwarf planets,” one of four discovered so far, the exploration of Pluto and its moons is a first look into a realm of our solar system that we know almost nothing about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since childhood, I—along with millions of others—have dreamed about what Pluto may be like, envisioning a dark, icy landscape glittering under the weak rays of a sun no brighter than an exceptional star. That long dream is almost over–and my excitement is hard to contain!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NASA Co-Discovers the Most Distant Extrasolar Planet Yet",
"headTitle": "NASA Co-Discovers the Most Distant Extrasolar Planet Yet | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30179\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/aplanetfar.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30179\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/aplanetfar.jpg\" alt=\"Diagram of the Milky Way galaxy showing the distances to known extrasolar planets. (JPL-CalTech/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diagram of the Milky Way galaxy showing the distances to known extrasolar planets. (JPL-CalTech/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We’ve recently discovered one of the most distant extrasolar planets known to date. Or rather, \u003ca href=\"http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/6053-sig15-006-Map-of-Exoplanets-Found-in-Our-Galaxy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope\u003c/a> and Poland’s \u003ca href=\"http://ogle.astrouw.edu.pl/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment\u003c/a> (OGLE) have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extrasolar planets (exoplanets) are planets that orbit stars other than our sun, and in the past two decades we have detected over 1,800 of them. Most of these alien worlds belong to stars in our galaxy that are relatively close to our solar system, but scientists have used different techniques for detecting and studying exoplanets at greater distances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The newly discovered exoplanet, called OGLE-2014-BLG-0124L, has about half the mass of Jupiter and orbits a star 13,000 light years from Earth, close to the crowded, star-rich central core of our galaxy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The observing campaign to find and study far-flung exoplanets like this one is aimed at giving us a clearer understanding of the distribution of exoplanets across the galaxy, and insight into the conditions under which planetary systems form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Computing the Exoplanet’s Distance\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OGLE and Spitzer made the detection through “\u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/microlensing.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gravitational microlensing\u003c/a>” observations, which take advantage of the situation when a star passes between us and another star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30180\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlensdiagram.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30180\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlensdiagram.jpg\" alt=\"Diagram of a star and planet focusing the light of a more distant star toward on observer on Earth.\" width=\"400\" height=\"189\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diagram of a star and planet focusing the light of a more distant star toward on observer on Earth.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Just as a telescope’s glass lens bends and focuses light to produce a brighter image of a distant object, a star’s gravity can do the same trick, but on a much grander scale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a star passes between us and a more distant star, its gravity can bend and focus the farther star’s light, causing a temporary increase in its brightness. If there happens to be a planet orbiting the intermediate star, its light also may be magnified and detected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Measuring the distance to this far-off exoplanet was accomplished by comparing observations made by an Earth-based OGLE telescope and NASA’s Spitzer, which orbits the sun far from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By noting the difference in the times of the lensing event as observed by OGLE and Spitzer, scientists were able to triangulate the distance of 13,000 light years—or 78 quadrillion miles! And by pinpointing the distance, the estimate of the exoplanet’s half-Jupiter mass was also possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Polling the Galactic Core\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Polling the population of exoplanets in the star-dense region of the galactic core adds to our knowledge of exoplanets both near and far, providing data to help answer questions like: are exoplanets more or less common in the galactic core, versus the spiral arms where our solar system resides? Scientists seek to explore how planetary formation may be influenced by a star system’s location in the galaxy, so the more we know about the nature of exoplanetary systems in different regions, the better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30181\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 193px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlens-193x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30181 size-medium\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlens-193x162.jpg\" alt=\"A gravitational lens of a much greater scale: a giant elliptical galaxy focusing the light of a more distant galaxy into a ring shape. (HST/NASA)\" width=\"193\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A gravitational lens of a much greater scale: a giant elliptical galaxy focusing the light of a more distant galaxy into a ring shape. (HST/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Microlensing detections made by a single observatory cannot always yield much more than an exoplanet’s presence. A very distant star detected with this technique isn’t normally visible, making the determination of its exact distance (and that of any planets it may possess) difficult to impossible. Of the 30 exoplanets detected through gravitational microlensing, the farthest being 25,000 light years away, we know the distance to only about half of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another factor in this type of observation is the chance nature of the star crossings, which we can only observe once for any given pair of stars. So, we may have only one chance to make a planet detection, with no possible follow-up observations. Still, the far greater concentration of stars in and near the galactic core provides many more star crossings and opportunities to make exoplanet detections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Exoplanets Closer to Home\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Closer to home, the more common techniques for finding exoplanets—either by measuring the wobble of a star caused by an orbiting planet or the dimming of its light when a planet transits in front of it—has yielded \u003ca href=\"http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">over 1800 confirmed worlds\u003c/a>, mostly orbiting stars much closer to our solar system’s neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which pursues exoplanets using the transit method, is responsible for the bulk of those finds, as well as most of the detections of \u003ca href=\"http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth-sized planets\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least 65 exoplanets have been confirmed within 50 light years of Earth—close enough for the television and radio transmissions that we began broadcasting in the middle of the 20th century to have reached. As of next year, in fact, the first broadcasts of Star Trek (the original series) will have reached all 65 of these closest exoplanets!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the prospects of visiting any of these exoplanets in person—well, that may take a while. The \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/10/19/found-in-space-exoplanet-alpha-centauri-bb/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">closest known exoplanet\u003c/a>, which orbits the nearest star to our solar system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.36 light years away, or 26.16 trillion miles, a distance that would take the fastest spacecraft we’ve ever flown almost 60,000 years to reach.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A collaboration between NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Poland's Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) project has recently discovered one of the most distant extrasolar planets known to date. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30179\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/aplanetfar.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30179\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/aplanetfar.jpg\" alt=\"Diagram of the Milky Way galaxy showing the distances to known extrasolar planets. (JPL-CalTech/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diagram of the Milky Way galaxy showing the distances to known extrasolar planets. (JPL-CalTech/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We’ve recently discovered one of the most distant extrasolar planets known to date. Or rather, \u003ca href=\"http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/6053-sig15-006-Map-of-Exoplanets-Found-in-Our-Galaxy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope\u003c/a> and Poland’s \u003ca href=\"http://ogle.astrouw.edu.pl/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment\u003c/a> (OGLE) have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extrasolar planets (exoplanets) are planets that orbit stars other than our sun, and in the past two decades we have detected over 1,800 of them. Most of these alien worlds belong to stars in our galaxy that are relatively close to our solar system, but scientists have used different techniques for detecting and studying exoplanets at greater distances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The newly discovered exoplanet, called OGLE-2014-BLG-0124L, has about half the mass of Jupiter and orbits a star 13,000 light years from Earth, close to the crowded, star-rich central core of our galaxy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The observing campaign to find and study far-flung exoplanets like this one is aimed at giving us a clearer understanding of the distribution of exoplanets across the galaxy, and insight into the conditions under which planetary systems form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Computing the Exoplanet’s Distance\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OGLE and Spitzer made the detection through “\u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/microlensing.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gravitational microlensing\u003c/a>” observations, which take advantage of the situation when a star passes between us and another star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30180\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlensdiagram.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30180\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlensdiagram.jpg\" alt=\"Diagram of a star and planet focusing the light of a more distant star toward on observer on Earth.\" width=\"400\" height=\"189\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Diagram of a star and planet focusing the light of a more distant star toward on observer on Earth.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Just as a telescope’s glass lens bends and focuses light to produce a brighter image of a distant object, a star’s gravity can do the same trick, but on a much grander scale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a star passes between us and a more distant star, its gravity can bend and focus the farther star’s light, causing a temporary increase in its brightness. If there happens to be a planet orbiting the intermediate star, its light also may be magnified and detected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Measuring the distance to this far-off exoplanet was accomplished by comparing observations made by an Earth-based OGLE telescope and NASA’s Spitzer, which orbits the sun far from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By noting the difference in the times of the lensing event as observed by OGLE and Spitzer, scientists were able to triangulate the distance of 13,000 light years—or 78 quadrillion miles! And by pinpointing the distance, the estimate of the exoplanet’s half-Jupiter mass was also possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Polling the Galactic Core\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Polling the population of exoplanets in the star-dense region of the galactic core adds to our knowledge of exoplanets both near and far, providing data to help answer questions like: are exoplanets more or less common in the galactic core, versus the spiral arms where our solar system resides? Scientists seek to explore how planetary formation may be influenced by a star system’s location in the galaxy, so the more we know about the nature of exoplanetary systems in different regions, the better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_30181\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 193px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlens-193x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-30181 size-medium\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/05/gravlens-193x162.jpg\" alt=\"A gravitational lens of a much greater scale: a giant elliptical galaxy focusing the light of a more distant galaxy into a ring shape. (HST/NASA)\" width=\"193\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A gravitational lens of a much greater scale: a giant elliptical galaxy focusing the light of a more distant galaxy into a ring shape. (HST/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Microlensing detections made by a single observatory cannot always yield much more than an exoplanet’s presence. A very distant star detected with this technique isn’t normally visible, making the determination of its exact distance (and that of any planets it may possess) difficult to impossible. Of the 30 exoplanets detected through gravitational microlensing, the farthest being 25,000 light years away, we know the distance to only about half of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another factor in this type of observation is the chance nature of the star crossings, which we can only observe once for any given pair of stars. So, we may have only one chance to make a planet detection, with no possible follow-up observations. Still, the far greater concentration of stars in and near the galactic core provides many more star crossings and opportunities to make exoplanet detections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Exoplanets Closer to Home\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Closer to home, the more common techniques for finding exoplanets—either by measuring the wobble of a star caused by an orbiting planet or the dimming of its light when a planet transits in front of it—has yielded \u003ca href=\"http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">over 1800 confirmed worlds\u003c/a>, mostly orbiting stars much closer to our solar system’s neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which pursues exoplanets using the transit method, is responsible for the bulk of those finds, as well as most of the detections of \u003ca href=\"http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Earth-sized planets\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least 65 exoplanets have been confirmed within 50 light years of Earth—close enough for the television and radio transmissions that we began broadcasting in the middle of the 20th century to have reached. As of next year, in fact, the first broadcasts of Star Trek (the original series) will have reached all 65 of these closest exoplanets!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the prospects of visiting any of these exoplanets in person—well, that may take a while. The \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/10/19/found-in-space-exoplanet-alpha-centauri-bb/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">closest known exoplanet\u003c/a>, which orbits the nearest star to our solar system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.36 light years away, or 26.16 trillion miles, a distance that would take the fastest spacecraft we’ve ever flown almost 60,000 years to reach.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NASA's Most Recent Successes in the Search for Life-friendly Conditions on Mars",
"headTitle": "NASA’s Most Recent Successes in the Search for Life-friendly Conditions on Mars | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29791\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/curiosity-at-mojave.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29791\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/curiosity-at-mojave.jpg\" alt=\"Curiosity's self-portrait at "Mojave" on Mount Sharp. (JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Curiosity’s self-portrait at “Mojave” on Mount Sharp. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The 1964 science fiction classic, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars,” paraphrased an old adage, “Water is where you find it.” NASA’s exploration of the real Mars has paraphrased further, “On Mars, water seems to be where you look for it!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Intensive exploration of Mars by NASA spacecraft continues to pay tantalizing dividends in our quest for signs of liquid water, and the potentially life-friendly environments it could offer. Here are a few recent finds by the Curiosity rover, and other spacecraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Mineral Veins of Garden City\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Recently, NASA’s Curiosity rover \u003ca title=\"Curiosity discovers veins of water-deposited minerals in Garden City\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4536\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">discovered a mineral formation\u003c/a> that drew the eye of mission water-seekers. Criss-crossing the bedrock of a site named Garden City are raised veins of whitish material, marbled through the rock in a very particular pattern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29796\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/garden_city-mineral_veins-288x159.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-29796\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/garden_city-mineral_veins-288x159.jpg\" alt=\"Mineral veins found by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)\" width=\"288\" height=\"159\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mineral veins found by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On Earth, similar formations of mineral veins lacing through rock are created when water, flowing through cracks, deposits minerals. In Garden City on Mars, erosion of the surrounding rock has exposed the veins, forming small ridges as high as 2.5 inches and an inch or so wide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upon closer examination, the veins were found to be two-shaded, with darker material at the edges sandwiching a lighter layer between. This indicates a process that involved different liquid water solutions depositing different minerals at different times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curiosity, as well as the veteran rover \u003ca title=\"Opportunity finds a layer of gypsum\" href=\"http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/newsroom/pressreleases/20111207a.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Opportunity\u003c/a>, had found outcroppings of likely water-formed calcium sulfate in other locations, but the two-tone veins at Garden City offer a more detailed glimpse into the story of how the environment, at least locally, may have changed long ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Curiosity continues its climb up the slopes of Mount Sharp, exploring ever-younger layers of sediment, a more complete picture of how the apparently watery Mars of long ago became the dry desert world we know today will develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Martian Mud?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While most of Curiosity’s instrumentation is geared to study the chemistry and morphology of the Martian soil and rock, atmospheric data collected by its Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) has produced\u003ca title=\"Do liquid brines form on Mars at night?\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4549\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> a fascinating watery possibility\u003c/a> as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than a year, REMS has measured atmospheric temperature and relative humidity in the lower region of Gale Crater where Curiosity is exploring. From these measurements, along with the previous detection of perchlorate salts in more than one location on Mars, a theory has developed suggesting that liquid water on Mars’ surface isn’t necessarily a thing of the distant past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the theory goes, under the right conditions of temperature and relative humidity, salty minerals like perchlorate, which draw in surrounding water vapor from the air, can form a liquid brine in the soil—most likely at night when temperatures drop. Overnight brine moisture would evaporate under the sun’s rays after dawn, but for a time the mixture would form a substance that might be characterized as “Martian mud….”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">On Mars, water seems to be where you look for it….\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Under typical Martian surface conditions today, liquid water cannot persist due to the low atmospheric pressure and temperature, which tend to drive it into gaseous (water vapor) or solid (ice) states. But with perchlorate in the mix, water’s freezing point can be lowered–not unlike how we lower the freezing point in an ice cream maker by adding salt!\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29808\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/577359main_pia14472-946b-216x162.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-29808\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/577359main_pia14472-946b-216x162.gif\" alt=\"Flows of material running down the slopes of crater walls on Mars, captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flows of material running down the slopes of crater walls on Mars, captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Though Gale Crater, located near the planet’s equator, is one of Mars’ least likely climates for brine-forming conditions, Curiosity’s observations suggest that small amounts could form for short periods. In Mars’ higher latitudes, where atmospheric relative humidity is greater and sunlight less intense, the conditions are more favorable. In fact, overnight brine accumulation is a leading contender to explain \u003ca title=\"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures downhill flows of material on Mars\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20110804.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">downhill flows of material\u003c/a> observed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on high-latitude steep slopes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ready-to-eat Nitrogen\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another recent detection made by Curiosity is that of “ready to eat” nitrogen—so to speak. Though this detection does not pertain to water, it is of possible relevance to the same ultimate goal of Mars exploration: detection of life-friendly environments on Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time it was \u003ca title=\"Biologically useful nitrogen detected on Mars\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4516\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SAM’s time to tell the story\u003c/a>—SAM, the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument. SAM detected nitric oxide (a molecule of one nitrogen and one oxygen atom) in a collected soil sample. The nitric oxide is thought to have been released when nitrates in the sample broke down as it was heated—and in any case, this marks the first discovery of “biologically useful” forms of nitrogen on Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nitrates in general are nitrogen-bearing molecules of a form that living organisms can make use of in the life process. In Earth life, obtaining nitrogen from the environment is crucial, since it is an essential element of such important molecules as DNA and RNA, among other things. Though nitrogen is abundant in Earth’s atmosphere, making up 79% of it, most of it is in the form of nitrogen gas, a molecule of two very tightly bound nitrogen atoms. Most life forms on Earth cannot make use of nitrogen in this form, though certain organisms can break it apart and convert it to usable forms, and in doing so introduce nitrates into the food chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists don’t believe that the nitrates found in Mars’ soil were produced by biological activity, but rather by non-biological processes, probably long ago in Mars’ past. Energetic events like meteorite impacts and lighting strikes are two possible nitrate-forming agents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever the source, the fact that nitrogen in a form that Earth-organisms would “eat up” is present adds to the preponderance of evidence that Mars once had a habitable environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether anything actually inhabited Mars is still an open question, but one actively being pursued by missions like Curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29791\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/curiosity-at-mojave.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29791\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/curiosity-at-mojave.jpg\" alt=\"Curiosity's self-portrait at "Mojave" on Mount Sharp. (JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Curiosity’s self-portrait at “Mojave” on Mount Sharp. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The 1964 science fiction classic, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars,” paraphrased an old adage, “Water is where you find it.” NASA’s exploration of the real Mars has paraphrased further, “On Mars, water seems to be where you look for it!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Intensive exploration of Mars by NASA spacecraft continues to pay tantalizing dividends in our quest for signs of liquid water, and the potentially life-friendly environments it could offer. Here are a few recent finds by the Curiosity rover, and other spacecraft.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Mineral Veins of Garden City\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Recently, NASA’s Curiosity rover \u003ca title=\"Curiosity discovers veins of water-deposited minerals in Garden City\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4536\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">discovered a mineral formation\u003c/a> that drew the eye of mission water-seekers. Criss-crossing the bedrock of a site named Garden City are raised veins of whitish material, marbled through the rock in a very particular pattern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29796\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/garden_city-mineral_veins-288x159.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-29796\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/garden_city-mineral_veins-288x159.jpg\" alt=\"Mineral veins found by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)\" width=\"288\" height=\"159\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mineral veins found by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mount Sharp. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On Earth, similar formations of mineral veins lacing through rock are created when water, flowing through cracks, deposits minerals. In Garden City on Mars, erosion of the surrounding rock has exposed the veins, forming small ridges as high as 2.5 inches and an inch or so wide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upon closer examination, the veins were found to be two-shaded, with darker material at the edges sandwiching a lighter layer between. This indicates a process that involved different liquid water solutions depositing different minerals at different times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curiosity, as well as the veteran rover \u003ca title=\"Opportunity finds a layer of gypsum\" href=\"http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/newsroom/pressreleases/20111207a.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Opportunity\u003c/a>, had found outcroppings of likely water-formed calcium sulfate in other locations, but the two-tone veins at Garden City offer a more detailed glimpse into the story of how the environment, at least locally, may have changed long ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Curiosity continues its climb up the slopes of Mount Sharp, exploring ever-younger layers of sediment, a more complete picture of how the apparently watery Mars of long ago became the dry desert world we know today will develop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Martian Mud?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While most of Curiosity’s instrumentation is geared to study the chemistry and morphology of the Martian soil and rock, atmospheric data collected by its Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) has produced\u003ca title=\"Do liquid brines form on Mars at night?\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4549\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> a fascinating watery possibility\u003c/a> as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than a year, REMS has measured atmospheric temperature and relative humidity in the lower region of Gale Crater where Curiosity is exploring. From these measurements, along with the previous detection of perchlorate salts in more than one location on Mars, a theory has developed suggesting that liquid water on Mars’ surface isn’t necessarily a thing of the distant past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the theory goes, under the right conditions of temperature and relative humidity, salty minerals like perchlorate, which draw in surrounding water vapor from the air, can form a liquid brine in the soil—most likely at night when temperatures drop. Overnight brine moisture would evaporate under the sun’s rays after dawn, but for a time the mixture would form a substance that might be characterized as “Martian mud….”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">On Mars, water seems to be where you look for it….\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Under typical Martian surface conditions today, liquid water cannot persist due to the low atmospheric pressure and temperature, which tend to drive it into gaseous (water vapor) or solid (ice) states. But with perchlorate in the mix, water’s freezing point can be lowered–not unlike how we lower the freezing point in an ice cream maker by adding salt!\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29808\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 216px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/577359main_pia14472-946b-216x162.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-29808\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/577359main_pia14472-946b-216x162.gif\" alt=\"Flows of material running down the slopes of crater walls on Mars, captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flows of material running down the slopes of crater walls on Mars, captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Though Gale Crater, located near the planet’s equator, is one of Mars’ least likely climates for brine-forming conditions, Curiosity’s observations suggest that small amounts could form for short periods. In Mars’ higher latitudes, where atmospheric relative humidity is greater and sunlight less intense, the conditions are more favorable. In fact, overnight brine accumulation is a leading contender to explain \u003ca title=\"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures downhill flows of material on Mars\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20110804.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">downhill flows of material\u003c/a> observed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on high-latitude steep slopes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ready-to-eat Nitrogen\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another recent detection made by Curiosity is that of “ready to eat” nitrogen—so to speak. Though this detection does not pertain to water, it is of possible relevance to the same ultimate goal of Mars exploration: detection of life-friendly environments on Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time it was \u003ca title=\"Biologically useful nitrogen detected on Mars\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4516\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SAM’s time to tell the story\u003c/a>—SAM, the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument. SAM detected nitric oxide (a molecule of one nitrogen and one oxygen atom) in a collected soil sample. The nitric oxide is thought to have been released when nitrates in the sample broke down as it was heated—and in any case, this marks the first discovery of “biologically useful” forms of nitrogen on Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nitrates in general are nitrogen-bearing molecules of a form that living organisms can make use of in the life process. In Earth life, obtaining nitrogen from the environment is crucial, since it is an essential element of such important molecules as DNA and RNA, among other things. Though nitrogen is abundant in Earth’s atmosphere, making up 79% of it, most of it is in the form of nitrogen gas, a molecule of two very tightly bound nitrogen atoms. Most life forms on Earth cannot make use of nitrogen in this form, though certain organisms can break it apart and convert it to usable forms, and in doing so introduce nitrates into the food chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists don’t believe that the nitrates found in Mars’ soil were produced by biological activity, but rather by non-biological processes, probably long ago in Mars’ past. Energetic events like meteorite impacts and lighting strikes are two possible nitrate-forming agents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever the source, the fact that nitrogen in a form that Earth-organisms would “eat up” is present adds to the preponderance of evidence that Mars once had a habitable environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether anything actually inhabited Mars is still an open question, but one actively being pursued by missions like Curiosity.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "More Exoplanet Thrills on the Horizon",
"headTitle": "More Exoplanet Thrills on the Horizon | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29226\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/kepler186f-artistconcept.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29226\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/kepler186f-artistconcept.jpg\" alt=\"Artist concept of Kepler 186f, an Earth-sized exoplanet within its star's habitable zone. (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist concept of Kepler 186f, an Earth-sized exoplanet within its star’s habitable zone. (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Faint planets orbiting distant stars are by nature challenging to find, and long eluded detection. But since 1992, when Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan first confirmed the existence of an extrasolar planet, the numbers we’ve found have snowballed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, NASA’s next-step missions aimed at understanding the Milky Way’s apparent abundance of worlds are on the horizon. The \u003ca title=\"Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite\" href=\"http://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite\u003c/a> (TESS) and \u003ca title=\"James Webb Space Telescope\" href=\"http://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">James Webb Space Telescope\u003c/a> (JWST) promise to be powerful tools in the discovery of new exoplanets, and will allow us to study their physical characteristics in far greater detail.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\u003cem>The most common type of exoplanet is between one and two times the size of Earth.\u003c/em>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The effects that distant exoplanets have on their stars — the wobbling motion caused by their gravitational tug as they revolve, or the subtle dimming of starlight as they pass in front — have long been our primary means of getting to know these far-off worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not surprisingly, the first exoplanet discoveries were of gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn — planets that orbit close to their stars so their telltale influences are more pronounced, and easier to detect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Search for Planets A Bit Like Earth\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On March 7, 2009, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft launched on an ambitious campaign to search for Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting their stars at moderate distances. That is, distances where conditions are right to support the presence of liquid water, the indispensable elixir of life as we know it (that is to say, \u003cem>Earth\u003c/em> life).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before a series of unfortunate mechanical failures in 2012 and 2013, Kepler focused on a narrow patch of sky near the constellation Cygnus, observing stars ranging from a couple hundred to almost 8,000 light years away from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29336\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 337px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/nasa-exoplanet-missions.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29336\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/nasa-exoplanet-missions.png\" alt=\"The evolution of NASA's exoplanet missions. (NASA/TESS)\" width=\"337\" height=\"227\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The evolution of NASA’s exoplanet missions. (NASA/TESS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To date, astronomers have confirmed a total 1,827 exoplanets, more than a thousand of them detected by Kepler. And there are more than 4,600 Kepler candidates still awaiting confirmation — impressive results for only a few short years of observations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In total, about 30 exoplanets, all between one and two times the size of Earth, have been ranked as \u003cem>\u003ca title=\"Potentially Habitable Exoplanets\" href=\"http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">potentially habitable\u003c/a>\u003c/em> planets!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Kepler partially on the fritz (though reinstated as Kepler 2.0, and now on a mission adapted to its handicapped status), we can look to NASA’s TESS and JWST missions to advance us to the next step in our exploration of exoplanets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Looking Closer to Home\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TESS, scheduled for launch in 2016, will cast its eye closer to home than Kepler. Where Kepler observed a narrow, cone-shaped swatch of the Milky Way galaxy extending thousands of light years, TESS will target stars that are 30 to 100 times brighter — and consequently, mostly closer to us — than Kepler’s subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29231\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 690px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/expected-tess-yield.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29231\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/expected-tess-yield.jpg\" alt=\"Left: Currently known planets. Right: Currently known planets, including the simulated population of TESS exoplanet detections. (TESS/NASA)\" width=\"690\" height=\"473\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Currently known planets orbiting stars with a certain brightness. Right: Same as left, plus, in red, the number of exoplanets scientists expect TESS may discover. (TESS/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of Kepler’s revelations was that the most common type of exoplanet is between one and two times the size of Earth. \u003ca title=\"Exoplanet Travel Bureau\" href=\"http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/exoplanet_travel_bureau\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Science fiction stories\u003c/a> dating back many decades preferred these Earth-style planets over gas giants like Jupiter or diminutive dwarfs like Pluto; the planets usually hosted characters who needed solid ground to stand on, and temperate, breathable air to sustain them. Science looks to Earthy exoplanets as the most likely places to find signs of life. How exciting to learn that both science and science fiction have been rewarded for their visions!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kepler’s exo-Earth finds, however, mostly orbit \u003ca title=\"Two new Earth-like exoplanets\" href=\"http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/two-new-exoplanet-discoveries-are-most-earth-like-yet-140106.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">distant and often faint stars\u003c/a>. So beyond being a good source of statistical data that has informed us of the \u003ca title=\"Billions of Earth-Like Exoplanets Exist in Our Milky Way Galaxy, Say Scientists\" href=\"http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-billions-earth-like-exoplanets-milky-way-galaxy-02472.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">abundance of exoplanets \u003c/a>in our galaxy, there’s been little opportunity to follow up with more detailed measurements or characterization of their physical properties. In most cases, they’re just too far away to tell us much more than their approximate sizes and orbital periods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TESS, on the other hand, should yield a catalog full of transiting exoplanets located around the brightest and nearest stars in the galaxy — close enough for large telescopes, on the ground and in space, to conduct follow-up analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What Are Exoplanets Made Of?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JWST, the infrared-wavelength successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018 and will be a powerful tool in exoplanet investigation. Not only will the JWST study exoplanets by the conventional measurements of star-wobble and exoplanet transits, but unlike Kepler and most other observatories, this space telescope will make direct observations of exoplanets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”wmlcyTmYfsJ01ylP4IHcKd7pDUq9UrPt”]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JWST will carry an instrument called a coronagraph, which blocks the light of a star and allows the relatively much fainter infrared emissions of an orbiting exoplanet to be detected and analyzed. Using that information, JWST will be able to determine a range of physical characteristics, including an exoplanet’s color, rotation rate, differences between summer and winter, weather patterns, and possibly even vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only some six decades ago, we didn’t even have a good understanding of what nearby planets like Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are like. Now, we’re examining planets many light years away, in other star systems, with enthusiasm, hopeful expectation and burgeoning imagination.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The number of planets we have found orbiting other stars has snowballed in recent years, thanks to discoveries by the Kepler spacecraft. Now, NASA's next missions toward understanding the Milky Way's abundant worlds are preparing for launch.",
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"description": "The number of planets we have found orbiting other stars has snowballed in recent years, thanks to discoveries by the Kepler spacecraft. Now, NASA's next missions toward understanding the Milky Way's abundant worlds are preparing for launch.",
"title": "More Exoplanet Thrills on the Horizon | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29226\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/kepler186f-artistconcept.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29226\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/kepler186f-artistconcept.jpg\" alt=\"Artist concept of Kepler 186f, an Earth-sized exoplanet within its star's habitable zone. (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist concept of Kepler 186f, an Earth-sized exoplanet within its star’s habitable zone. (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Faint planets orbiting distant stars are by nature challenging to find, and long eluded detection. But since 1992, when Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan first confirmed the existence of an extrasolar planet, the numbers we’ve found have snowballed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, NASA’s next-step missions aimed at understanding the Milky Way’s apparent abundance of worlds are on the horizon. The \u003ca title=\"Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite\" href=\"http://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite\u003c/a> (TESS) and \u003ca title=\"James Webb Space Telescope\" href=\"http://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">James Webb Space Telescope\u003c/a> (JWST) promise to be powerful tools in the discovery of new exoplanets, and will allow us to study their physical characteristics in far greater detail.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\u003cem>The most common type of exoplanet is between one and two times the size of Earth.\u003c/em>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The effects that distant exoplanets have on their stars — the wobbling motion caused by their gravitational tug as they revolve, or the subtle dimming of starlight as they pass in front — have long been our primary means of getting to know these far-off worlds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not surprisingly, the first exoplanet discoveries were of gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn — planets that orbit close to their stars so their telltale influences are more pronounced, and easier to detect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Search for Planets A Bit Like Earth\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On March 7, 2009, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft launched on an ambitious campaign to search for Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting their stars at moderate distances. That is, distances where conditions are right to support the presence of liquid water, the indispensable elixir of life as we know it (that is to say, \u003cem>Earth\u003c/em> life).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before a series of unfortunate mechanical failures in 2012 and 2013, Kepler focused on a narrow patch of sky near the constellation Cygnus, observing stars ranging from a couple hundred to almost 8,000 light years away from Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29336\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 337px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/nasa-exoplanet-missions.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29336\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/nasa-exoplanet-missions.png\" alt=\"The evolution of NASA's exoplanet missions. (NASA/TESS)\" width=\"337\" height=\"227\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The evolution of NASA’s exoplanet missions. (NASA/TESS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To date, astronomers have confirmed a total 1,827 exoplanets, more than a thousand of them detected by Kepler. And there are more than 4,600 Kepler candidates still awaiting confirmation — impressive results for only a few short years of observations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In total, about 30 exoplanets, all between one and two times the size of Earth, have been ranked as \u003cem>\u003ca title=\"Potentially Habitable Exoplanets\" href=\"http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">potentially habitable\u003c/a>\u003c/em> planets!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Kepler partially on the fritz (though reinstated as Kepler 2.0, and now on a mission adapted to its handicapped status), we can look to NASA’s TESS and JWST missions to advance us to the next step in our exploration of exoplanets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Looking Closer to Home\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TESS, scheduled for launch in 2016, will cast its eye closer to home than Kepler. Where Kepler observed a narrow, cone-shaped swatch of the Milky Way galaxy extending thousands of light years, TESS will target stars that are 30 to 100 times brighter — and consequently, mostly closer to us — than Kepler’s subjects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29231\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 690px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/expected-tess-yield.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29231\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/expected-tess-yield.jpg\" alt=\"Left: Currently known planets. Right: Currently known planets, including the simulated population of TESS exoplanet detections. (TESS/NASA)\" width=\"690\" height=\"473\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Left: Currently known planets orbiting stars with a certain brightness. Right: Same as left, plus, in red, the number of exoplanets scientists expect TESS may discover. (TESS/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of Kepler’s revelations was that the most common type of exoplanet is between one and two times the size of Earth. \u003ca title=\"Exoplanet Travel Bureau\" href=\"http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/exoplanet_travel_bureau\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Science fiction stories\u003c/a> dating back many decades preferred these Earth-style planets over gas giants like Jupiter or diminutive dwarfs like Pluto; the planets usually hosted characters who needed solid ground to stand on, and temperate, breathable air to sustain them. Science looks to Earthy exoplanets as the most likely places to find signs of life. How exciting to learn that both science and science fiction have been rewarded for their visions!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kepler’s exo-Earth finds, however, mostly orbit \u003ca title=\"Two new Earth-like exoplanets\" href=\"http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/two-new-exoplanet-discoveries-are-most-earth-like-yet-140106.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">distant and often faint stars\u003c/a>. So beyond being a good source of statistical data that has informed us of the \u003ca title=\"Billions of Earth-Like Exoplanets Exist in Our Milky Way Galaxy, Say Scientists\" href=\"http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-billions-earth-like-exoplanets-milky-way-galaxy-02472.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">abundance of exoplanets \u003c/a>in our galaxy, there’s been little opportunity to follow up with more detailed measurements or characterization of their physical properties. In most cases, they’re just too far away to tell us much more than their approximate sizes and orbital periods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TESS, on the other hand, should yield a catalog full of transiting exoplanets located around the brightest and nearest stars in the galaxy — close enough for large telescopes, on the ground and in space, to conduct follow-up analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What Are Exoplanets Made Of?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JWST, the infrared-wavelength successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018 and will be a powerful tool in exoplanet investigation. Not only will the JWST study exoplanets by the conventional measurements of star-wobble and exoplanet transits, but unlike Kepler and most other observatories, this space telescope will make direct observations of exoplanets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JWST will carry an instrument called a coronagraph, which blocks the light of a star and allows the relatively much fainter infrared emissions of an orbiting exoplanet to be detected and analyzed. Using that information, JWST will be able to determine a range of physical characteristics, including an exoplanet’s color, rotation rate, differences between summer and winter, weather patterns, and possibly even vegetation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only some six decades ago, we didn’t even have a good understanding of what nearby planets like Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are like. Now, we’re examining planets many light years away, in other star systems, with enthusiasm, hopeful expectation and burgeoning imagination.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Alien Life Might Live in Our Own Solar System",
"headTitle": "Alien Life Might Live in Our Own Solar System | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/04/20150413ScienceSolarSystemLife.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29154\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus-e1428707689654.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29154\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus-e1428707689654.jpg\" alt=\"An artist's rendering of vents on Saturn's moon Enceladus. New research suggests water below the surface there is near boiling hot and could be habitable for microbial life. (David Seal/NASA)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist’s rendering of vents on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. New research suggests water below the surface there is near boiling hot and could be habitable for microbial life. (David Seal/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There are thousands of planets orbiting stars in Earth’s galactic neighborhood. Scientists are spotting new planets so fast it’s hard to keep up — and many of them could be habitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade,” \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-nasa-search-alien-life-20150407-story.html\">said NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan\u003c/a> last week. “I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, we might find alien life right here in our own backyard, just a few planets over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Life — at least, life as we know it — requires liquid water, more and more of which \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/science/space/suddenly-it-seems-water-is-everywhere-in-solar-system.html\">keeps turning up\u003c/a> around the solar system. Research \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14262.epdf?referrer_access_token=TIJP4EwwMbxZ9hQ9sCXqRNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MfNjfSDEXIGYUVERnxB4yt1qm3vncv6g0T2d4NhWGHs7O9c8Esa6txChvxJCKD9sAE7lIUHsxgJv72rpaMa0etTtSTViTyGTBJxE5E2Y1H-9Kxbv-hyjLlQgO6Y0ICrZR6KI8SpFqUYkFuvRdaV1rU5jxiKfVSTukyweAxnbUZ0_xzi0pcBKYP7AkjaQ0skO6YzPb9c5GRAD1S-EB14paO&tracking_referrer=www.nytimes.com\">published last month\u003c/a> in the journal Nature says one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, has water that’s near boiling — cozy, for certain forms of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But we aren’t likely to find Hollywood aliens like the one that exploded out of Sigourney Weaver’s shipmate, or that stalked “Men in Black’s” Tommy Lee Jones: “Imagine a giant cockroach with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex, and a real short temper.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade.’\u003ccite>— Ellen Stofan,\u003cbr>\nNASA’s Chief Scientist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Rather, experts say there’s a good chance of finding microbial aliens. After all, by some measures microbes are the dominant form of life here on Earth. They were here a couple billion years before us, or dinosaurs or even jellyfish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tori Hoehler is a chemist who studies microbiology at \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/\">NASA’s Ames Research Center \u003c/a>in Mountain View; the facility also happens to boast the world’s largest wind tunnel. Hoehler says one place to get a glimpse of the ancient world is on the roof above his office. “Some people think a time machine looks like a DeLorean,” he says, referencing “Back To The Future’s” time-traveling car. “But it actually looks like a greenhouse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside NASA’s greenhouse are boxes containing thick carpets of what Hoehler calls “orange goo.” It’s hard to fathom, but this is almost entirely made up of microbes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every cubic centimeter in there would have about a trillion individuals in it,” Hoehler says, “microbial cells.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This gunk is the bulk of life’s history on Earth. If alien explorers had visited Earth two billion years ago looking for life, Hoehler says, “they would’ve found a slime world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As scientists develop an ever clearer picture of the outer solar system, the odds of finding a place that resembles a slime world are looking decent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29128\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 272px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29128\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus1.jpg\" alt=\"New research says water below the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus is near boiling hot. “It has no excuse for having the degree of geologic activity that we found there,” says one planetary geologist. (NASA)\" width=\"272\" height=\"320\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New research says water below the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is near boiling hot. “It has no excuse for having the degree of geologic activity that we found there,” says one planetary geologist. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Moons in the Outer Solar System\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saturn’s moon Enceladus is tiny – just 300 miles in diameter. It doesn’t have the mysterious methane lakes and dense atmosphere of Titan, another one of Saturn’s moons. It also lacks the convenient proximity of Mars. Trips to the red planet from Earth can be measured in months, while missions to Saturn take years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Planetary geologist Cynthia Phillips says Enceladus’ claim to fame are its geysers, which spew ice out into Saturn’s rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found these plumes actually venting material from near the south pole of Enceladus, and that was really surprising,” Phillips says. “It has no excuse for having the degree of geologic activity that we’ve found there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phillips works at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.seti.org/\">SETI Institute\u003c/a> in Mountain View. SETI stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, although for Phillips, that last bit is not a deal-breaker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t have to be intelligent life,” she says. “Any kind of life. I’ll take microbes, I’ll take single-celled organisms — anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moons orbiting gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter are subject to immense gravitational forces; these pull on and flex the moons’ crusts. The resulting friction leads to a process called “tidal heating.” Phillips points fondly to a globe of Europa. The icy moon that orbits Jupiter is a potential candidate for life (and future exploration) and is Phillips’ avowed favorite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Being five times as far from the sun as Earth, Europa gets 25 times less energy, meaning life there can’t bank on the sun for warmth. Tidal heating could be a tidy alternative, keeping some water in liquid form below the surface of moons like Europa and Enceladus. Recent research from the University of Colorado, Boulder, suggests that water under the surface of Enceladus is actually quite hot – 194 degrees Fahrenheit – well within the known parameters of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And even if it’s only bacteria,” says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer and research director at SETI, “that tells you that biology is all over the place. That’s big news!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ever More Possibilities\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shostak says there are \u003ca href=\"http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?Category=Planets&IM_ID=20089\">several places\u003c/a> in the solar system where life could turn up. In addition to Europa, there are signs of subsurface oceans on two other moons of Jupiter: Callisto and Ganymede. And those oceans are some 20 times deeper than Earth’s Pacific Ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29123\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/PierceLife-1024x515.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-29123\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/PierceLife-1024x515.jpg\" alt=\"Life could turn up in several places around the solar system; here are a few scientists are curious about. (David Pierce/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"515\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Life could turn up in several places around the solar system; here are a few scientists are curious about. (David Pierce/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Each of those has an ocean that’s maybe 60 miles deep,” says Shostak, “so this is incredibly large amounts of water. On these moons there’s more water — twice as much water as on the Earth. It’s been sitting there for four billion years, maybe it’s cooked something up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it has, life there could well be quite different from Earthly biology. DNA may not even be a factor. In fact, alien life could theoretically get by without carbon or water at all, instead substituting alternatives like silicon and ammonia. While some astrobiologists say this “weird life” could occur in the clouds of Venus, most believe life in the solar system is staked around liquid water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as \u003ca href=\"http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/\">more data streams in\u003c/a> from nearby stars, it looks like about one in five has a planet somewhat like Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Well, \u003cem>somewhat\u003c/em> might be good enough for microbes,” says Shostak. “So if that’s the case, that means that there are on the order of maybe a hundred billion worlds in our galaxy that have biology, if biology’s easy to cook up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a very big number, Shostak says – and keep in mind, there are 150 billion other galaxies out there, at least that we can see.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "NASA's top scientist says she thinks evidence of life beyond Earth will turn up in the next couple of decades. Why so optimistic? Scientists have been discovering liquid water all around the solar system, and even though life on other planets might look different than it does here on Earth, scientists bet liquid water will be essential.",
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"description": "NASA's top scientist says she thinks evidence of life beyond Earth will turn up in the next couple of decades. Why so optimistic? Scientists have been discovering liquid water all around the solar system, and even though life on other planets might look different than it does here on Earth, scientists bet liquid water will be essential.",
"title": "Alien Life Might Live in Our Own Solar System | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29154\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus-e1428707689654.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-29154\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus-e1428707689654.jpg\" alt=\"An artist's rendering of vents on Saturn's moon Enceladus. New research suggests water below the surface there is near boiling hot and could be habitable for microbial life. (David Seal/NASA)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist’s rendering of vents on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. New research suggests water below the surface there is near boiling hot and could be habitable for microbial life. (David Seal/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There are thousands of planets orbiting stars in Earth’s galactic neighborhood. Scientists are spotting new planets so fast it’s hard to keep up — and many of them could be habitable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade,” \u003ca href=\"http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-nasa-search-alien-life-20150407-story.html\">said NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan\u003c/a> last week. “I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, we might find alien life right here in our own backyard, just a few planets over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Life — at least, life as we know it — requires liquid water, more and more of which \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/science/space/suddenly-it-seems-water-is-everywhere-in-solar-system.html\">keeps turning up\u003c/a> around the solar system. Research \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14262.epdf?referrer_access_token=TIJP4EwwMbxZ9hQ9sCXqRNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MfNjfSDEXIGYUVERnxB4yt1qm3vncv6g0T2d4NhWGHs7O9c8Esa6txChvxJCKD9sAE7lIUHsxgJv72rpaMa0etTtSTViTyGTBJxE5E2Y1H-9Kxbv-hyjLlQgO6Y0ICrZR6KI8SpFqUYkFuvRdaV1rU5jxiKfVSTukyweAxnbUZ0_xzi0pcBKYP7AkjaQ0skO6YzPb9c5GRAD1S-EB14paO&tracking_referrer=www.nytimes.com\">published last month\u003c/a> in the journal Nature says one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, has water that’s near boiling — cozy, for certain forms of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But we aren’t likely to find Hollywood aliens like the one that exploded out of Sigourney Weaver’s shipmate, or that stalked “Men in Black’s” Tommy Lee Jones: “Imagine a giant cockroach with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex, and a real short temper.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade.’\u003ccite>— Ellen Stofan,\u003cbr>\nNASA’s Chief Scientist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Rather, experts say there’s a good chance of finding microbial aliens. After all, by some measures microbes are the dominant form of life here on Earth. They were here a couple billion years before us, or dinosaurs or even jellyfish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tori Hoehler is a chemist who studies microbiology at \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/\">NASA’s Ames Research Center \u003c/a>in Mountain View; the facility also happens to boast the world’s largest wind tunnel. Hoehler says one place to get a glimpse of the ancient world is on the roof above his office. “Some people think a time machine looks like a DeLorean,” he says, referencing “Back To The Future’s” time-traveling car. “But it actually looks like a greenhouse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inside NASA’s greenhouse are boxes containing thick carpets of what Hoehler calls “orange goo.” It’s hard to fathom, but this is almost entirely made up of microbes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every cubic centimeter in there would have about a trillion individuals in it,” Hoehler says, “microbial cells.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This gunk is the bulk of life’s history on Earth. If alien explorers had visited Earth two billion years ago looking for life, Hoehler says, “they would’ve found a slime world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As scientists develop an ever clearer picture of the outer solar system, the odds of finding a place that resembles a slime world are looking decent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29128\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 272px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29128\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/Enceladus1.jpg\" alt=\"New research says water below the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus is near boiling hot. “It has no excuse for having the degree of geologic activity that we found there,” says one planetary geologist. (NASA)\" width=\"272\" height=\"320\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New research says water below the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus is near boiling hot. “It has no excuse for having the degree of geologic activity that we found there,” says one planetary geologist. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Moons in the Outer Solar System\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saturn’s moon Enceladus is tiny – just 300 miles in diameter. It doesn’t have the mysterious methane lakes and dense atmosphere of Titan, another one of Saturn’s moons. It also lacks the convenient proximity of Mars. Trips to the red planet from Earth can be measured in months, while missions to Saturn take years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Planetary geologist Cynthia Phillips says Enceladus’ claim to fame are its geysers, which spew ice out into Saturn’s rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found these plumes actually venting material from near the south pole of Enceladus, and that was really surprising,” Phillips says. “It has no excuse for having the degree of geologic activity that we’ve found there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Phillips works at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.seti.org/\">SETI Institute\u003c/a> in Mountain View. SETI stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, although for Phillips, that last bit is not a deal-breaker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It doesn’t have to be intelligent life,” she says. “Any kind of life. I’ll take microbes, I’ll take single-celled organisms — anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moons orbiting gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter are subject to immense gravitational forces; these pull on and flex the moons’ crusts. The resulting friction leads to a process called “tidal heating.” Phillips points fondly to a globe of Europa. The icy moon that orbits Jupiter is a potential candidate for life (and future exploration) and is Phillips’ avowed favorite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Being five times as far from the sun as Earth, Europa gets 25 times less energy, meaning life there can’t bank on the sun for warmth. Tidal heating could be a tidy alternative, keeping some water in liquid form below the surface of moons like Europa and Enceladus. Recent research from the University of Colorado, Boulder, suggests that water under the surface of Enceladus is actually quite hot – 194 degrees Fahrenheit – well within the known parameters of life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And even if it’s only bacteria,” says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer and research director at SETI, “that tells you that biology is all over the place. That’s big news!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ever More Possibilities\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shostak says there are \u003ca href=\"http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?Category=Planets&IM_ID=20089\">several places\u003c/a> in the solar system where life could turn up. In addition to Europa, there are signs of subsurface oceans on two other moons of Jupiter: Callisto and Ganymede. And those oceans are some 20 times deeper than Earth’s Pacific Ocean.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_29123\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/PierceLife-1024x515.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-29123\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/PierceLife-1024x515.jpg\" alt=\"Life could turn up in several places around the solar system; here are a few scientists are curious about. (David Pierce/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"515\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Life could turn up in several places around the solar system; here are a few scientists are curious about. (David Pierce/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Each of those has an ocean that’s maybe 60 miles deep,” says Shostak, “so this is incredibly large amounts of water. On these moons there’s more water — twice as much water as on the Earth. It’s been sitting there for four billion years, maybe it’s cooked something up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it has, life there could well be quite different from Earthly biology. DNA may not even be a factor. In fact, alien life could theoretically get by without carbon or water at all, instead substituting alternatives like silicon and ammonia. While some astrobiologists say this “weird life” could occur in the clouds of Venus, most believe life in the solar system is staked around liquid water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as \u003ca href=\"http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/\">more data streams in\u003c/a> from nearby stars, it looks like about one in five has a planet somewhat like Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Well, \u003cem>somewhat\u003c/em> might be good enough for microbes,” says Shostak. “So if that’s the case, that means that there are on the order of maybe a hundred billion worlds in our galaxy that have biology, if biology’s easy to cook up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s a very big number, Shostak says – and keep in mind, there are 150 billion other galaxies out there, at least that we can see.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Lunar Eclipse Visible in Bay Area Saturday Morning",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28956\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/lunar-eclipse-5-1024x731.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-28956\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/lunar-eclipse-5-1024x731.jpg\" alt=\"Snapshot of a lunar eclipse from the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, Wash. in 2004. (Courtesy U.S. Navy) \" width=\"1024\" height=\"731\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Snapshot of a lunar eclipse from the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, Wash. in 2004. (Courtesy U.S. Navy)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bay Area residents will have an orchestra-seat view of a rare astronomical event this Saturday: a total lunar eclipse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth and sun align so that the Earth casts a shadow on the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This can occur up to three times a year. But Saturday morning’s show will be a total eclipse, when the moon is full and the Earth’s shadow completely covers it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This happens twice annually at most, and can only be seen from whichever hemisphere is shrouded in darkness at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, it will be visible from Western North America, though the total part of the eclipse–when the moon is in the sun’s full shadow–will only be visible for a fleeting five minutes, between 4:58-5:03 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/What-is-a-Lunar-eclipse_graphic.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-28969\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/What-is-a-Lunar-eclipse_graphic-1024x511.jpg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"1024\" height=\"511\">\u003c/a>This happens because the only sunlight hitting the moon has been bent toward the red end of the spectrum by passing through the sun’s atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This will be the shortest lunar eclipse of the 21st century, but for these few minutes, the moon will bathed in a reddish glow, called a “blood moon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the same phenomenon, called \u003ca href=\"http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/492483/Rayleigh-scattering\">Rayleigh scattering\u003c/a>, that colors sunsets red and orange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This will be the third of four lunar eclipses taking place over four years. The first was in April 2014, and the last and final of the series will be on September 28, 2015.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A total lunar eclipse, also known as a \"blood moon,\" will be visible from the Bay Area early Saturday morning.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28956\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/lunar-eclipse-5-1024x731.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-28956\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/lunar-eclipse-5-1024x731.jpg\" alt=\"Snapshot of a lunar eclipse from the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, Wash. in 2004. (Courtesy U.S. Navy) \" width=\"1024\" height=\"731\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Snapshot of a lunar eclipse from the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, Wash. in 2004. (Courtesy U.S. Navy)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bay Area residents will have an orchestra-seat view of a rare astronomical event this Saturday: a total lunar eclipse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth and sun align so that the Earth casts a shadow on the moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This can occur up to three times a year. But Saturday morning’s show will be a total eclipse, when the moon is full and the Earth’s shadow completely covers it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This happens twice annually at most, and can only be seen from whichever hemisphere is shrouded in darkness at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, it will be visible from Western North America, though the total part of the eclipse–when the moon is in the sun’s full shadow–will only be visible for a fleeting five minutes, between 4:58-5:03 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/What-is-a-Lunar-eclipse_graphic.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-28969\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/04/What-is-a-Lunar-eclipse_graphic-1024x511.jpg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"1024\" height=\"511\">\u003c/a>This happens because the only sunlight hitting the moon has been bent toward the red end of the spectrum by passing through the sun’s atmosphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This will be the shortest lunar eclipse of the 21st century, but for these few minutes, the moon will bathed in a reddish glow, called a “blood moon.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the same phenomenon, called \u003ca href=\"http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/492483/Rayleigh-scattering\">Rayleigh scattering\u003c/a>, that colors sunsets red and orange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This will be the third of four lunar eclipses taking place over four years. The first was in April 2014, and the last and final of the series will be on September 28, 2015.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NASA's MESSENGER Spacecraft: Preparing Its Farewell Message From Mercury",
"headTitle": "NASA’s MESSENGER Spacecraft: Preparing Its Farewell Message From Mercury | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28789\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/MESSENGER-Mercury.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28789\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/MESSENGER-Mercury.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft spiraling toward the surface of its 10-year study, planet Mercury. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft spiraling toward the surface of its 10-year study, planet Mercury. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When is the last time you thought of the planet Mercury? That smallest of planets, closest to the sun and ever hiding behind the skirts of dawn or dusk, is easy to overlook—out of sight, out of mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mercury has been on scientists’ minds for some time now and subjected to close scientific scrutiny by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft for the better part of a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mercury is a world of wonderful extremes. It is the closest planet to the sun, the smallest planet of the solar system, and also \u003ca title=\"Why is Mercury so dense?\" href=\"http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/why_mercury/q1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of the densest\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, owing to its density, tiny Mercury’s surface gravity is about equal to that of the larger Mars. It is thought that as much as 75% of Mercury’s radius may account for a very large, iron-rich core.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28795\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 394px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/rupes-1024x554.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-28795\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/rupes-1024x554.jpg\" alt='Artist impression of a \"rupes\" (cliff), or \"lobate scarp,\" on Mercury. These scarps were uplifted as Mercury cooled and contracted. (Michael Carroll, the Johns Hopkins University Press)' width=\"394\" height=\"213\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist impression of a “rupes” (cliff), or “lobate scarp,” on Mercury. These scarps were uplifted as Mercury cooled and contracted. (Michael Carroll, the Johns Hopkins University Press)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mercury experiences day and night temperature swings ranging from colder than -300 to hotter than 800 degrees Fahrenheit–the largest range in the solar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Named for the Roman messenger god, Mercury is the speediest planet, zipping around the sun in only 88 days at speeds ranging from 24 to 36 miles per second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, in stark contrast to this short orbital period, Mercury’s slow rotation of 176 Earth days makes for very, very long days and nights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for all of its \u003ca title=\"Explore Mercury through Google Earth\" href=\"http://www.messenger-education.org/googletours.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fascinating characteristics\u003c/a> and its relative closeness to us, Mercury had been one of the least explored planets of the solar system, receiving only three fleeting flybys by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974, which revealed to us only half of the planet’s surface, and gave us the impression that Mercury might be very similar to Earth’s Moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s \u003ca title=\"NASA MESSENGER\" href=\"http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging”\u003c/a> (obviously, someone at NASA really wanted this acronym to spell out “MESSENGER”) spacecraft finally gave us a better look a decade ago when it arrived at Mercury, revealing that the resemblance to our Moon is truly only skin deep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike our lightweight Moon, Mercury possesses a massive iron core, and currents within its molten portion generate a strong global magnetic field, not unlike Earth’s protective magnetosphere. Mercury’s surface composition is also quite different, its surface rocks containing far less iron and far more sulfur than the Moon. And though both Moon and Mercury are covered with impact craters (the main reason for their superficial resemblance), Mercury also possesses an abundance of “\u003ca title=\"Lobate scarps\" href=\"http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~shane/PTYS_395_MERCURY/presentations/lobate_scarps.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lobate scarps\u003c/a>,” a telltale geographic feature formed by global contraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">There is strong evidence that water ice exists in Mercury’s polar craters\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Perhaps \u003ca title=\"Evidence for water ice on Mercury\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/media/PressConf20121129.html#.VRmxTfzF98F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of the more unexpected\u003c/a> and fascinating finds on Mercury is indication of the presence of—believe it or not–water ice. Mercury lacks any significant atmosphere, which means that although daytime highs soar, when its surface slowly rotates to the shade of night, temperatures plummet. This in itself does not foster the existence of permanent water ice, for even if ice somehow appeared during the long night, it would evaporate come day again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, because Mercury’s axial tilt is nearly zero, conditions at its poles, particularly at the bottom of crater floors, do harbor pockets of permanent shadow, in which ice could persist—and there is compelling evidence of significant ice deposits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MESSENGER will soon deliver its final message to us. Its rocket propellant tanks nearly depleted after years of orbital maneuvering, NASA has engaged this spacecraft in a so-called \u003ca title=\"NASA's "hover campaign" for MESSENGER\" href=\"http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=276\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“hover” campaign\u003c/a>, in which MESSENGER is descending closer and closer to Mercury’s surface and obtaining the highest resolution imagery and other data of its entire mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s plan is to get every last bit of science out of MESSENGER as it descends, until the moment that it impacts Mercury’s surface and decisively ends its mission in a flourish of fireworks that no one will see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it collides with Mercury’s surface, MESSENGER will have joined a very small “club” of spacecraft from Earth that have physically contacted other bodies in the cosmos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This “Touchdown Club” includes: numerous robotic and human-crewed spacecraft that have landed on the Moon; a large and growing number of landers and rovers that have set down (intact or in pieces) on Mars; a similarly decorated corps of heat-resistant robots on Venus; the Galileo spacecraft, which first sent an atmospheric probe into Jupiter’s cloudtops, and then added itself to this short list in an end of mission flame-out; Cassini’s Huygens probe on Titan; the NEAR spacecraft on the asteroid Eros; and finally, and most recently, the partially successful landing of Europe’s Philae probe on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Good luck, and farewell, MESSENGER!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is soon to end its 10-year mission in a fiery touchdown on the surface of the planet Mercury--but not before giving us our most up-close look yet at this little understood and elusive world. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28789\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/MESSENGER-Mercury.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28789\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/MESSENGER-Mercury.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft spiraling toward the surface of its 10-year study, planet Mercury. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft spiraling toward the surface of its 10-year study, planet Mercury. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When is the last time you thought of the planet Mercury? That smallest of planets, closest to the sun and ever hiding behind the skirts of dawn or dusk, is easy to overlook—out of sight, out of mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Mercury has been on scientists’ minds for some time now and subjected to close scientific scrutiny by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft for the better part of a decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mercury is a world of wonderful extremes. It is the closest planet to the sun, the smallest planet of the solar system, and also \u003ca title=\"Why is Mercury so dense?\" href=\"http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/why_mercury/q1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of the densest\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, owing to its density, tiny Mercury’s surface gravity is about equal to that of the larger Mars. It is thought that as much as 75% of Mercury’s radius may account for a very large, iron-rich core.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28795\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 394px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/rupes-1024x554.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-28795\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/rupes-1024x554.jpg\" alt='Artist impression of a \"rupes\" (cliff), or \"lobate scarp,\" on Mercury. These scarps were uplifted as Mercury cooled and contracted. (Michael Carroll, the Johns Hopkins University Press)' width=\"394\" height=\"213\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist impression of a “rupes” (cliff), or “lobate scarp,” on Mercury. These scarps were uplifted as Mercury cooled and contracted. (Michael Carroll, the Johns Hopkins University Press)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mercury experiences day and night temperature swings ranging from colder than -300 to hotter than 800 degrees Fahrenheit–the largest range in the solar system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Named for the Roman messenger god, Mercury is the speediest planet, zipping around the sun in only 88 days at speeds ranging from 24 to 36 miles per second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, in stark contrast to this short orbital period, Mercury’s slow rotation of 176 Earth days makes for very, very long days and nights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for all of its \u003ca title=\"Explore Mercury through Google Earth\" href=\"http://www.messenger-education.org/googletours.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fascinating characteristics\u003c/a> and its relative closeness to us, Mercury had been one of the least explored planets of the solar system, receiving only three fleeting flybys by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974, which revealed to us only half of the planet’s surface, and gave us the impression that Mercury might be very similar to Earth’s Moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s \u003ca title=\"NASA MESSENGER\" href=\"http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging”\u003c/a> (obviously, someone at NASA really wanted this acronym to spell out “MESSENGER”) spacecraft finally gave us a better look a decade ago when it arrived at Mercury, revealing that the resemblance to our Moon is truly only skin deep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unlike our lightweight Moon, Mercury possesses a massive iron core, and currents within its molten portion generate a strong global magnetic field, not unlike Earth’s protective magnetosphere. Mercury’s surface composition is also quite different, its surface rocks containing far less iron and far more sulfur than the Moon. And though both Moon and Mercury are covered with impact craters (the main reason for their superficial resemblance), Mercury also possesses an abundance of “\u003ca title=\"Lobate scarps\" href=\"http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~shane/PTYS_395_MERCURY/presentations/lobate_scarps.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lobate scarps\u003c/a>,” a telltale geographic feature formed by global contraction.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">There is strong evidence that water ice exists in Mercury’s polar craters\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Perhaps \u003ca title=\"Evidence for water ice on Mercury\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/media/PressConf20121129.html#.VRmxTfzF98F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one of the more unexpected\u003c/a> and fascinating finds on Mercury is indication of the presence of—believe it or not–water ice. Mercury lacks any significant atmosphere, which means that although daytime highs soar, when its surface slowly rotates to the shade of night, temperatures plummet. This in itself does not foster the existence of permanent water ice, for even if ice somehow appeared during the long night, it would evaporate come day again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, because Mercury’s axial tilt is nearly zero, conditions at its poles, particularly at the bottom of crater floors, do harbor pockets of permanent shadow, in which ice could persist—and there is compelling evidence of significant ice deposits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MESSENGER will soon deliver its final message to us. Its rocket propellant tanks nearly depleted after years of orbital maneuvering, NASA has engaged this spacecraft in a so-called \u003ca title=\"NASA's "hover campaign" for MESSENGER\" href=\"http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=276\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“hover” campaign\u003c/a>, in which MESSENGER is descending closer and closer to Mercury’s surface and obtaining the highest resolution imagery and other data of its entire mission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s plan is to get every last bit of science out of MESSENGER as it descends, until the moment that it impacts Mercury’s surface and decisively ends its mission in a flourish of fireworks that no one will see.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it collides with Mercury’s surface, MESSENGER will have joined a very small “club” of spacecraft from Earth that have physically contacted other bodies in the cosmos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This “Touchdown Club” includes: numerous robotic and human-crewed spacecraft that have landed on the Moon; a large and growing number of landers and rovers that have set down (intact or in pieces) on Mars; a similarly decorated corps of heat-resistant robots on Venus; the Galileo spacecraft, which first sent an atmospheric probe into Jupiter’s cloudtops, and then added itself to this short list in an end of mission flame-out; Cassini’s Huygens probe on Titan; the NEAR spacecraft on the asteroid Eros; and finally, and most recently, the partially successful landing of Europe’s Philae probe on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Good luck, and farewell, MESSENGER!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"id": "here-and-now",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
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